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Book_ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOam 




















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CATTLE 


WINNIFRED EATON 

(ONOTA WATONNA) 

FRONTISPIECE BY 
GEORGE W. GAGEt 



aW.J.WATT&CQ 

PUBLISHH y 

601 MADISON AVE.. VIEW >ORJG 


c * r,^ 






Copyright, 1924, by 
W. J. WATT & COMPANY 


/ 



Printed in the United States of America 


APR 11 1924 1 

©C1A778822 > 






TO MY OLD FRIEND 


FRANK PUTNAM 



















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* 


* 






















HIS EYES RESTED ON THE GLOWING FACE OF THE GIRL 

IN THE DRIVER’S SEAT 




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CHAPTER I 

F OUR Alberta ranches are the scene of this story. 

Of these, three were quarter sections of land in 
Yankee Valley, and the fourth the vast Bar Q, 
whose two hundred thousand rich acres of grain, hay 
and grazing lands stretched from the prairie into the 
foothills of the Rocky Mountains, where it spread over 
the finest pastures and the “Chinook”-swept south 
slopes, where the cattle grazed all winter long as in 
summer-time, its jealous fingers, like those of a miser 
who begrudges a pinch of his gold, reaching across into 
the Indian Reserve. 

For many years the Bar Q cattle had had the right 
of way over the Indian lands, the agents who came and 
went having found it more profitable to work in the 
interests of the cowman than in those of mere Indians. 
As everywhere else in the country thereabouts, includ¬ 
ing the Indians themselves, the agents soon came under 
the power, and were swept into the colossal “game,” 
of the owner of the Bar Q, the man known throughout 
the country as the “Bull.” 


1 


2 


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Few could recall when first the Bull, or to give him 
his proper name, Bill Langdon, had come into the foot¬ 
hills. His brand had blazed out bold and huge when 
the railroads were pushing their noses into the new 
land before the trails were marked. Even at that early 
period, his covetous eye had marked the Indian cattle, 
“rolling fat” in the term of the cattle world, and 
smugly grazing over the rich pasture lands, with the 
“I. D.” (Indian Department) brand upon their right 
ribs, warning “rustlers” from east, west, south, and 
north, that the beasts were the property of the Cana¬ 
dian Government. 

Little Bull Langdon cared for the Canadian Govern¬ 
ment and he spat contemptuously at the name. Bull 
had come in great haste out of Montana, and although 
he had ^flouted the laws of his native land, away from 
it he chose to regard with supreme contempt all other 
portions of the earth that were not included in the 
great Union across the line. 

His first cattle were “rustled” from the unbranded 
Indian calves which renegade members of the tribe had 
driven to convenient forest corrals and traded them to 
the cowman for the drink they craved. Though the 
rustling of Indian cattle proved remunerative and easy. 


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Langdon by no means overlooked or despised the cattle 
of the early pioneers, nor the fancy fat stock imported 
into the country by the English “remittance men.” 

Slowly the Bar Q herd grew in size and quality, and 
as it increased, Bull Langdon acquired life-long leases 
upon thousands of acres of Government land—Forest 
and Indian Reserve. Closing in upon discouraged and 
impoverished homesteaders and pioneers he bought 
what he could not steal. 

Somewhere, somehow, the Bull had come upon a 
phrase of the early days that appealed vastly to his 
greedy and vain imagination. 

“The cattle on a thousand hills are mine!” he gloated, 
and roared aloud another favorite boast: 

“There ain’t no cattle on two or four legs that Bull 
Langdon fears.” 

He was a man of gigantic stature, with a coarse, 
brutal face, and in his expression there was something 
of the primitive savage. 

The name “Bull” had been given him because of his 
bellowing voice, his great strength and his driving 
methods with men and cattle. Tyrannical, unprinci¬ 
pled and cruel, Bull was hated and feared. He had 
fought his way to the top by the sheer force of his 


4 


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raging, dominating personality, and once there he 
reigned in arrogance without mercy or scruple. 

To him cattle and men were much alike. Most men, 
he asserted, were “scrub” stock, and would come tamely 
and submissively before the branding iron. Very few 
were spirited and thoroughbred, and for these the 
Squeezegate had been invented, in which all who were 
not “broke,” emerged crippled or were killed. Finally 
there were the mavericks, wild stuff, that escaping the 
lariat of the cowpuncher, roamed the range unbranded, 
and for these outlaws the Bull had a measure of respect. 
There was a double bounty for every head of such stuff 
rolled into the Bar Q, and quite often the Bull himself 
would join in the dangerous and exciting business of 
running them to ground. 

If the Bull looked upon men in the same way as on 
cattle, he had still less respect for the female of the 
human species. With few exceptions, he would snarl, 
spitting with contempt, women were all scrub stock, 
easy stuff that could be whistled or driven to home 
pastures. A man had but to reach out and help him¬ 
self to whichever one he wanted. 

By some such contemptuous speeches as these he had 
overruled the alarmed objections with which his pro- 


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posal had been received by the timid, gentle girl from 
Ontario, whom he had found teaching in the rural school 
planted in the heart of the then stern and rigid country. 
It is true, he had thrown no lariat over the school 
teacher’s neck, for he had no wish to kill the thing he 
coveted, but the cowmen knew of diabolical traps more 
ingenious than the Squeezegate in which a girl’s un¬ 
wary feet might be ensnared. 

She was an innocent, harmless creature, soft and 
devoted, the kind that is born to mother things, but 
Mrs. Langdon had had only dream-things to mother; 
the babes that came to her with every year were born 
only to die immediately, as on some barren homestead 
the mother fought out her agony and longing alone and 
with no one to minister to their needs. 

That was the tragedy of this land in the early days, 
that in innumerable cases the doctors’ help would often 
come not at all, or come too late to be of any avail. 

Time could neither accustom nor compensate the wife 
of the cattleman to those fearful losses, nor compen¬ 
sate her for them. And each time she would cling to 
the hope that the Bull would send her, before it was too 
late, to the city, to Calgary. Those were the years, 
however, when the Bull had had neither time nor thought 


6 


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for such unimportant things as his wife’s troubles. He 
was the type of man who will sit up all night long with 
a sick cow, or scour the range in search of a lost one, 
but look with indifference and callousness upon a 
woman’s suffering, especially if she be his wife. Those 
were the years when the Bull was building up his herd. 
He was buying and stealing land and cattle. He was 
drunk with a dream of conquest and power, intent upon 
climbing to the top. It was his ambition to become 
the cattle king of Alberta—the King Pin of the north¬ 
west country. 

And when the years of power and affluence did come, 
it was too late to help the cattleman’s wife, for Mrs. 
Langdon had reached the age when she could no longer 
bear a child. The maternal instinct which dominated 
her, however, found an outlet in mothering the children 
of neighboring ranchers, the rosy-cheeked papooses on 
the little squaws’ backs, the rough lads who worked 
upon the ranch, and she even found room in her heart 
for Jake, the Bull’s half-witted illegitimate son. 

Jake was a half-breed, whose infirmity was due to a 
blow Langdon had dealt him on the day when, as a boy, 
his mother having died on the Indian Reserve, he had 
come to the Bar Q and ingenuously claimed the Bull 


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7 


as his father. As far as lay in her power, Mrs. Lang- 
don had sought to atone to the unfortunate half-breed 
for the father’s cruelty, and it was her gentle influence 
—she was newly married to the Bull at the time—that 
had prevailed upon him to allow Jake to continue upon 
the ranch. The boy worked about the house, doing the 
chores and the wood chopping and the carrying of 
water. He was slavishly devoted to his stepmother, 
and kept out of the reach of the heavy hand and foot 
of the Bull, for whom he entertained a wholesome terror. 


CHAPTER II 


A LTHOUGH this story chiefly concerns Bull 
l Langdon, we must return at this point to the 
three humble quarter sections aforementioned, which 
are the scene of part of its action. 

To the first of these the name of ranch or farm could 
only by courtesy be applied. It was known as the 
“D. D. D.,” the “D’s” being short for Dan Day Dump, 
as a neighboring farmer had once called the place, and 
the name had stuck to it ever since. 

It was on the extreme rocky edge of Yankee Valley, 
an otherwise prosperous section of the “prairie” coun¬ 
try, so named because most of its settlers had hailed 
originally from the U. S. A. 

Dan Day himself had come from the States, but he 
had found a wife in Canada. They had “fetched up” 
finally at this sorry “stopping-off place,” as they called 
it then, where first they squatted, and later, with the 
assistance of neighbors, who knew better than to let 
shiftless newcomers encroach upon the more fertile 

lands hard by, they had staked their homestead. There 
8 


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9 


Dan Day had put up the rackety shack and lean-to 
which had provided shelter of sorts for his growing 
family and stock, and in that rough environment the 
Day children had grown up like Indians. 

Time had taught the homesteader at least one lesson, 
which was that he would never squeeze a living out of 
his barren acres. Day, as his neighbors were wont to 
declare, shaking disapproving heads, was not cut out 
to be a farmer. Nevertheless, they grudgingly gave 
him work, putting up with his inept services chiefly be¬ 
cause as a community they waged unrelenting warfare 
against the stern approach of school authorities, who 
had begun to query whether the size of the Day family 
did not warrant the imposition upon the municipality 
of a new rural school. 

Time and growth, however, are things the farmer, 
most of all men, must reckon with, and even as the 
crops leaped up tall and strong out of the rich black 
virgin soil, even as the cattle and the stock flourished 
and increased until they spread over all the wide pas¬ 
ture lands of Alberta, so the Day progeny shot upward, 
and seemed, hungrily, to clamor for their place in the 
world. 

There were ten of them. A baby—and there was 


10 


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always a baby in that family—of a few months old, 
a toddler of two, another of three, another of five, 
twins of seven, a boy of nine, twins of twelve, and 
Nettie, the eldest. The mother dying when she was 
fourteen, the girl found herself faced with the desperate 
problem of fending and caring for the whole wild and 
hungry brood of her brothers and sisters. 

Nettie was of that blonde type seen often in the 
northern lands. She was a big girl, with milk-white 
skin and dead gold hair, a slow-moving, slow-thinking 
girl, simple-minded and totally ignorant of the world 
that lay beyond the narrow confines of their homestead 
land. 

School had played no part in the life of Nettie Day. 
She knew vaguely of the existence of books and papers, 
things she remembered vaguely as having seen, but she 
had not been able to read them. She believed that the 
world contained two kinds of folk, the rich and the poor. 
The rich lived away off somewhere on big ranches, 
where the cattle were fat and the grain grew high, 
though some lived also in the cities. Nettie had heard 
of cities; her father had come from a small town in 
Oregon. As for the poor folk, with simple resignation 
Nettie accepted the fact that to them belonged such as 


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themselves, the Days, for whom life was one unceasing 
struggle against hunger and cold. 

Occasionally a neighboring farmer, riding across the 
range or bringing home stray cattle, would drop in at 
the Day homestead and share the meager meal shyly 
set out by Nettie, and as the years went by and the 
girl began to unfold in the early blossoming of woman¬ 
hood the visitor might linger a while longer to stare 
curiously at this maturing product of the D. D. D. 
Nettie possessed one true and unfailing friend in the 
man who had brought her and her nine little brothers 
and sisters into the world; who came periodically to 
scold, tease and teach; to clean and work, himself, in 
an effort to bring some semblance of order into the 
chaotic confusion that reigned in that shack. 

Dr. McDermott, in spite of his twenty years in Can¬ 
ada, was still as stubbornly Scotch as on the day he 
landed. He was admitted to be the busiest man in the 
country, his practice extending from the prairie to the 
mountains. He had brought into the world most of the 
children born in that part of the country ever since he 
had planted his rough homestead there. There were 
other families as helpless as the Days and as dependent 
upon the “Doc” to scold and instruct them, and it was 


12 


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not often that he found time to talk with Nettie. She 
would decide in advance the questions she meant to ask 
him when his monthly visit came round, but being so 
slow and shy, by the time the doctor had finished his 
dissatisfied inspection of the family affairs, the ques¬ 
tions had all escaped her. But always the warm grip 
of his hand brought something surging up within her 
that sought utterance and expression. 

“Growing! Growing! Growing!” the Scotch doctor 
would growl, glaring round at the circle of healthy, 
grimy faces, “like weeds! like weeds !” Latterly, how¬ 
ever, like the neighbors, he had begun to look longer 
at Nettie, and with puckered brows he would change 
the word “weed” to “flower.” He told her she reminded 
him of a wild flower, and she liked that—it pleased her 
that her doctor friend had picked her out, as it were, 
from the weeds, and her bosom swelled with pride when 
he appeared one day unexpectedly at the shack and 
took her with him across the country to help care for 
a sick woman in a shack on the C. P. R. quarter section 
which had been Dr. McDermott’s own original home¬ 
stead. 

That swift running drive over the road allowances 


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13 


in the doctor’s democrat always stood out in her mem¬ 
ory as one of the few sweet days in her life. 

It was early March, but a “Chinook,” the warm wind 
which has its origin in the Japanese current, had 
melted the flying snow of a March blizzard; it was as 
though a miracle had been wrought; the Chinook had 
sunk deep into the earth and thawed the last bit of 
frost out of the ground. Streams were running along 
the roads, the sloughs were filling to the top, the cattle 
no longer nibbled in the neighborhood of the fenced-in 
hay and straw stacks, but bit down into the upspring- 
ing grass, green already in this wonderful land. Eight- 
horse teams were pulling plow, disc and harrow out into 
the fields, preparatory for an early seeding. Overhead 
a great, warm sun sent its benevolent rays abroad, fill¬ 
ing sky and earth with a warm glow; the land was 
bathed in sunlight. Small marvel that someone had 
fondly named it: “Sunny Alberta, the Land of Promise.” 

If Nettie was slow of speech and shy, Dr. McDermott 
was Scotch and brief. There was that, moreover, on 
his mind at this time, which dismayed and concerned 
him deeply. It is not strange, therefore, that as he 
whipped his horses to their top speed—they were upon 
an errand that he knew was a matter of life or death— 


14 


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he forgot the girl at his side, looking about her in a 
sort of trance. 

All the world seemed good and bonny to Nettie at 
this time; life was thrilling. The bumping, rickety 
old democrat was a luxurious coach, the rough trails 
and road allowances, full of holes and mud slews, a 
smooth highway over which she was being borne into a 
scene that spelled romance. 

She had never before had so wonderful a chance of 
seeing the whole country, across to where, on the hori¬ 
zon, the mighty peaks of the Rocky Mountains held 
their snowy fronts. The hills always stirred something 
in Nettie that was vaguely yearning, something that 
thrilled even while it pained. Though prairie born, and 
prairie raised, she aspired to the hills, not knowing why, 
except that the hills seemed to her lifted up, up, up, 
into the clouds themselves. She had a childlike faith 
that “something good” would come to her out of the 
hills. That “something good” she recognized with rap¬ 
ture in the young rider from the great Bar Q who one 
autumn day had spent a never-to-be-forgotten hour at 
the D. D. D. 

For several days long files of the Bar Q cattle had 
been trailing down from the hill country. They were 


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being driven from the summer range in the foothills to 
the grain ranches on the prairie where, in the shelter 
of the long cattle sheds, or loose in the sunlit pastures 
where stood the great straw and haj stacks, the mothers 
of the famous herd were especially housed and nurtured 
during the winter months, in preparation for the spring 
crop of calves. 

This annual fall movement was an exciting event in 
the lives of the young Days. The children kept count 
of every head of cattle that passed along the road, and 
there was great excitement and glee the following 
spring, when the herd returned to the foothills, with the 
pretty, white-faced calves “at heel.” 

Nettie was no less thrilled than her small brothers 
and sisters by the advent of the Bar Q cattle, and up 
to the time of her mother’s death she, too, had scram¬ 
bled with them under and over barbed wire fences, and 
scampered across pasture lands to reach the road in 
time to see the cattle pour by. After her mother’s 
death, things changed for Nettie. The babies tied her 
to the house, and the best she could do was to go as 
far as the edge of the corrals, a baby tucked under 
either arm, and toddlers clinging to her skirts. Here, 


16 


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standing upon a rail, she would call across to the flying 
youngsters her admonitions to be careful. 

That fall, however, hankering again to see the great 
herd from the hills as it passed to the lower lands, 
Nettie scrubbed the faces of her grimy little brood, 
arrayed them in clean jumpers made from bleached 
flour sacks, piled them aboard the old hay wagon, to 
which “Tick,” a brother of thirteen, had already har¬ 
nessed the team of geldings, and taking up the reins in 
her competent hands, she started for the trail. 

Nettie was a big girl, with the softly maturing figure 
of a young Juno. She looked more than her fifteen 
years. Her hair was as gold as the Alberta sun, 
whose warmth, together with her unwonted excitement, 
brought a flush to either rounded cheek. Her blue eyes, 
wide and candid, returned the smiles of the riders, who 
were visibly impressed by the picture she made driving 
her wagonload of tow-headed children out into the road. 
The eyes of the young men brightened; wide hats and 
flowing ties were adjusted, as they rode on in the sun¬ 
light, whistling and singing and whirling loose lariats 
in their hands. More than one of them made a mental 
note of the necessity of seeking strayed cattle in the 
near neighborhood of the D. D. D., and when the last 


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17 


of the herd disappeared down the grade, a single horse¬ 
man rode out of the bush and paused alongside the Day 
wagon. 

His broad face was sunburned, freckled, and ruddy, 
and wore a wide, friendly smile. He looked very straight 
out of clear eyes, eyes often seen in western Canada 
where men are ever gazing out over great distances, eyes 
that seem to hold the spirit of the outdoors and the 
freshness of unspoiled youth. The way he swept his 
large hat from his head and held it over the pommel 
of his saddle had something in it of unconscious grace 
and native courtliness, and he looked curiously boyish 
with his thick crop of brown hair ruffled by the slight 
wind. 

Had anyone in the Day wagon seen a roan heifer? 
“She” had given him a “sight of trouble.” Got into 
the bush half a mile down the grade, and “hanged if 
she didn’t get plumb out o’ sight somewhere in the 
willows.” 

No one in the Day wagon had seen a roan heifer; and 
the inquirer, screwing up his face, and scratching the 
side of his neck, ruminated in puzzled wonder as to the 
whereabouts of the missing animal, his eyes resting, 


18 


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meanwhile, upon the lifted, glowing face of the girl in 
the driver’s seat. 

While random conjecture and suggestion were being 
offered by each of the boys and girls, the rider sat up 
suddenly alert and pointing toward some invisible 
speck, which he declared was “back of the shack there,” 
he touched spurs to the flanks of his broncho and was 
off toward the house after the elusive lost one. But 
when the wagon pulled up into the barnyard, and the 
children and Nettie scrambled down, and crossed the 
yard to the house, they found the cowpuncher sitting 
disconsolately on the step, fanning himself with his 
great hat. Shaking his head at the shouted queries of 
the Day boys, as to whether he had found her, he 
replied: 

“Nope. Guess she’s Hewed the coop. Gosh! but I’m 
hungry. Guess I’d better hop along and catch up with 
the bunch, before they bolt all o’ the grub.” 

Which remark, needless to say, brought k clamorous 
invitation to dinner from the young Days, and after 
the usual protest at the trouble he’d be making, accom¬ 
panied by a questioning, rather wistful look toward 
Nettie, who shyly seconded the children’s invitation, he 


CATTLE 


19 


“guessed, well, mebbe I will, though don’t go to any 
trouble for me.” 

Trouble! Nettie flew about the mean room, her 
cheeks aflame, her eyes shining, her heart singing like 
a bird’s within her, while the children crowded about 
their guest, on whom, in his buckskin shirt, fur chaps, 
gauntlets and cowboy hat, their young prairie eyes 
gazed as upon a hero. 

It may, moreover, be recorded that Nettie was by no 
means the only one through whose veins an exhilarating 
elixir seemed to be bounding like champagne. Young 
Cyril Stanley at that moment was violently aware of 
a thumping organ to the left of his cardiac region. 

Love knows not time. It wells up in the human heart 
like the wave of the ocean that may not be beaten down. 
Nettie Day, hurrying about the kitchen, preparing a 
meal for the hungry stranger, and the stranger, with 
a “kid” on either knee and the others pressed as closely 
to him as space would allow, displaying his big jack¬ 
knife, quirt, beaded hatband and ticking watch to the 
delighted youngsters, looked at each other across the 
space of that poor and meager room, it seemed, though 
they could not have expressed it in words, that some¬ 
how life had become a poem, a glad dancing song. 


CHAPTER III 


T HE winter was long and harsh, with scarcely a 

single Chinook to temper the intense cold. To 

Nettie, vainly seeking to cope with the work, the 

noise and the disorder, which the shutting in of a dozen 

husky youngsters must inevitably entail, and to Cyril 

Stanley, conscientiously at work in the purebred camp 

of the Bar Q, the Alberta winter had never seemed so 

long and grim. Cyril, however, found an outlet for the 

new feelings that he did not find hard to analyze. An 

Ontario-born boy, of pure Scotch ancestry, he was 

both sentimental and practical. Though he had met 

her but once, he was certain that Nettie was the only 

girl in the world for him, and with a canny eye to the 

near future, he began immediately to prepare for the 

realization of his dreams. It did not take Cyril long 

to make application for the quarter-section homestead 

land, which lay midway between the Day place and 

Dr. McDermott’s original homestead. The savings of 
20 


CATTLE 


21 


several years were prudently expended upon barbed 
wire and fence post. 

Though the best rider and roper of the Bar Q, and 
in line for the post of foreman of that tempestuous 
ranch, Cyril’s faith was in the grain land, and he pur¬ 
posed to develop his homestead as soon as he could 
afford to do so. By sacrificing a certain amount of 
his pay, he could leave the Bar Q in the slack seasons 
and put in a certain amount of work each year upon 
his place. Already he possessed a few head of cattle 
and horses, and he planned to trade some of these for 
implements. He would begin the building of the house 
in the summer, after the fencing was done. The boy’s 
thoughts dwelt long and tenderly upon that house all 
winter long. He had the heart and home hunger of 
the man in the ranching country, who has come little 
into contact with women, yet craves their companion¬ 
ship. Cyril’s longing was the keener in that he now 
found himself in love for the first time in his life. He 
pictured Nettie in the house he would build, saw her 
moving about preparing their meal, thrilled at the 
thought of their eyes meeting and the touch of her 
hand in his. How she would light up the place. 

Dreams these—dreams that kept the once easy- 


22 


CATTLE 


tongued Cyril dumb and still, and aroused the good- 
natured questions of the fellows in the bunkhouses. 
Little cared Cyril for their jokes. He knew that spring 
would soon be there, and then- 

Spring, in fact, came early that year, ushered in 
miraculously on the wings of a magnificent Chinook, 
which blew without ceasing for four days and nights, 
its warm breath thawing the land so lately rigid with 
cold. 

Nettie, driving along the road in the Doctor’s demo¬ 
crat, turned about in the seat to stare, with mild won¬ 
der, at the three rolls of barbed wire and the heaped-up 
willow fence posts that were piled on the unbroken 
quarter by which they were now passing. 

“My!” said Nettie, “looks like someone’s took up 
this quarter. D’you know who they are, doc?” 

“Let’s see. Seems to me I did hear that a Bar Q 
hand had staked here.” 

At the word “Bar Q,” such a rush of color flooded 
the girl’s face that, had the doctor been less intent upon 
driving the lagging team at a speed they were totally 
unused to, he might have surprised the girl’s secret. 
But Dr. McDermott’s eyes were fastened steadily ahead 
to where, across the bald prairie, his own first home in 



CATTLE 


23 


Alberta thrust its blunt head against the skyline. He 
was in a hurry to reach that long deserted shack. 

From up the grade the figure of a horseman stood 
out in silhouette against the sun. Nettie’s heart began 
to beat so wildly that she was obliged to grip the sleeve 
of the doctor’s coat. 

“That’s right,” he growled. “Hold on tjght. These 
roads are a mortal disgrace—a disgrace to the com¬ 
munity. Hello, there!” 

Whip up, he hailed the rider, stopping long enough 
to give Cyril an opportunity to join them. 

“How do, doc! Business good?” 

The rider had awkwardly lifted his wide hat, but his 
eyes lighted up as he saw the other occupant of the 
cart, and over the girl’s cheeks there came a flush like 
the dawn. 

“C’n I do anything for you, doc? Everything all 
right ?” 

“Nothing’s right. Look at this road. It’s an eternal 
disgrace—a disgrace to the community.” 

Dr. McDermott cursed heartily and without stint. 

“Should’ve made the grade in quarter the time.” 

“Where you bound for? Shall I ride along with 
you?” 


24 


CATTLE 


“You may. Might need you. Sick worn—” He 
started to say “woman” and then curiously changed, 
and blurted out angrily, “Lady over there.” 

4< You don’t say. Not at your old dump? Well, 
what’s she doin’ there? Shall I go ahead, doc?” 

“She owns the place. Don’t know what happened, 
or when she arrived. Drove by this morning. Saw the 
door down and the nails off the window. Went in, and— 
Well, it’s a sick woman—a very sick woman! Get up, 
you, Mack!” 

He growled angrily at the lagging horses. 

Cyril rode close to the left-hand side of the demo¬ 
crat, his fur chapps at times brushing the girl. They 
looked at each other, flushed, turned away and looked 
back. For some time they rode along in an electric 
silence, tongue-tied but happy. Conversation at last 
bubbled forth, but of that which filled their young 
hearts to the brim no word was said; they talked of 
the common everyday topics of the ranching country. 

“Well, how’s things at D. D. D.?” 

“Not too bad. How’s things at Bar Q?” 

“Jake-a-loo. Stock in plumb good shape. Two hun¬ 
dred and eighty calves dropped already. Expectin’ 
all of two thousand this spring.” 


CATTLE 


25 


“Two thousand calves! Oh, my! That’s an awful 
sight of cattle.” She sighed. “We just got six head.” 

“That’s not too bad. Bull Langdon started with 
less than that. I got twenty head of my own. Hope 
to ketch up with the Bull by’n by.” 

They laughed heartily at that. Not so much be¬ 
cause of the wit and brilliance of the remark, but 
because their hearts were young, the spring had come, 
the sun was overhead and it was good to hear each 
other’s voices and to look into each other’s eyes. 

“What’s your brand ?” 

“Mine? You don’t say you never seen it yet?” 

Again they went off into a happy gale of laughter. 

“It’s a circle on the left rib. Gotter look out. Bar 
Q’s pretty much the same. All the Bull’s got to do to 
my circle is make a click to turn it into a Q and brand 
a bar above that. Pretty easy, huh?” 

“Oh-h, but he wouldn’t do a thing like that!” 

She was startled, palpably alarmed in his behalf, and 
that alarm was sweet and dear to him. 

“Wouldn’t he, though! Sa-ay, where’ve you been 
living all your days that you never heard how the Bull 
got his herd?” 

“Oh, my, I did hear once, b-but I didn’t suppose that 


26 


CATTLE 


now he’s so rich and owns half the cattle in the country, 
that he’d do such things any more.” 

“Oh, wouldn’t he, though! Just give’m half a chance. 
He’s got the habit, you see, and habits is like our skin. 
They stick to us.” 

Again they laughed merrily at this witticism. 

“Orders are,” went on Cyril, expanding under the 
girl’s flattering attention and the shy admiration that 
shone from her wide blue eyes, “to lick in any and all 
stuff runnin’ loose around the country, unbranded stuff, 
and stuff where the brand ain’t clear. He give me the 
tip himself. Said there’d be a five to the rider for every 
head rolled in. Of course, I’m not losin’ sleep about my 
stuff. I know just where they are on the range, you 
betchu, and I’m not leavin’ them out o’ sight too long. 
Thinkin’ of tradin’ them in, anyway, for—for—lumber 
and implements.” 

“Lumber?” she repeated innocently. 

“Yep. Goin’ to build.” 

As his gaze sank deeply into Nettie’s, her heart rose 
up and stood still in her breast. 

“Wh-what are you building?” she asked in a breath¬ 
less whisper, so that he had to bend down from his 


CATTLE 


27 


horse to catch the question, and the answer came with 
a boy’s rich laugh: 

“A home , girl!” 

After that ecstatic sentence, and as if to relieve some 
of his pent-up joy, Cyril rode forward at a quick can¬ 
ter, raced on ahead and back again, bringing up beside 
the slow-traveling democrat. 

The click of the doctor’s whip, swinging above the 
horses’ heads, became the only sound in the vast silence 
of the prairie. Dr. McDermott was considering the 
advisability of replacing his veterans which had given 
him such long and valiant service over many years; 
their feeble gait, though greatly to the taste of the 
engrossed young people, aroused the indignation and 
wrath of the harassed doctor. Just then a Ford, racing 
along the road at breakneck speed, jumped airily over 
a hole and splashed a stream of thick, black slimy mud 
over the slowly moving democrat and its occupants; 
it was the last straw in the cup of Dr. McDermott’s 
fury. There and then he vowed to pension the ancient 
geldings, and get himself one of those infernal machines 
that had of late been at once his torment and his temp¬ 
tation. 

Ever and anon, Cyril would ride a bit ahead, and 


28 


CATTLE 


as if to perform for the girl’s especial benefit, Bat, his 
mount, would rear up on his front or hind feet, plunge 
and buck recklessly, and perform other thrilling gyra¬ 
tions to the delight of his admiring audience of one. 
His wild tricks, however, could not feaze the rider, who 
sat firm and graceful, holding the peppery young 
broncho under complete and careless control. The 
horse, a youngster of five, grown impatient at their 
lagging pace along the trail, pulled and snorted in his 
efforts to race ahead of the slow, plugging veterans. 

“Oh, my,” said Nettie—he was riding close again— 
“he’s an awful spirited animal, isn’t he? Aren’t you 
the least bit afraid?” And then as he smiled at the 
idea, she added with the most simple and unfeigned 
admiration: “You ride just as if nothing—no kind of 
horse—could ever unseat you.” 

His chest swelled with pride, and he beamed down 
upon her. 

“ ’Bout time I knew how to ride. Been ridin’ sence 
I was a two-year-ole.” 

He offered another sally that brought forth the 
young laughter that so rejoiced his ears: 

“Say, didn’t you notice that I’m a bowleg?” 

Nettie looked at the brilliantly clad legs in their 


CATTLE 


29 


orange-colored fur chapps, under which their shape was 
utterly hidden. Their eyes met and again they burst 
out laughing as if they had just heard the funniest joke 
in the world. 

They had turned now into the road allowance which 
ran directly up to where the log cabin stood on the 
edge of the land. Something in the stillness, the soli¬ 
tary look of that lone cabin planted on the bare floor 
of the prairie sobered them, and they looked at the 
house with apprehension. Inside, they knew, was an 
English woman—a “lady” had said the doctor, and she 
was very sick. 

Silently they dismounted. Dr. McDermott walked 
ahead of the trio, the cowpuncher leading his horse and 
keeping close to the girl. 

As they stepped into the dim shadows of the bare 
room, the figure on the hard, home-made bed sat up 
suddenly. The face was thin and pinched, with spots 
of hectic color on either high cheek-bone. The woman’s 
bright eyes were fixed upon them, full of suspicion and 
fierce challenging. Her hair had been cut to the scalp; 
jagged and unlovely it covered her head in grotesque 
tufts as if forcing its way out despite the murderous 


30 


CATTLE 


shears. Crouched against the wall, she looked strangely 
like some wild thing at bay. 

Nettie’s first impulse of shock and fear gave way to 
one of overwhelming pity as she moved toward the bed. 
The bright, defiant eyes met her own, and the woman 
moistened her dry lips: 

“What do you want in my house? Who are you?” 

“I’m Nettie Day,” said the girl simply, “and I just 
want to help you.” 

“I don’t want any help,” cried the woman violently. 
“All I want is to be let alone.” 

The exertion, the violence of her reply brought on a 
fit of coughing that left her panting and too weak to 
resist the hands that tenderly lifted and held her. When 
the spasm had passed, she lay inert in Nettie’s arms, 
but when she opened her eyes again, they widened with 
a strange light as they stared up fixedly at the pitying 
face bent above her. The dry lips quivered, something 
that was pitifully like a smile broke over the sick 
woman’s face. She whispered: 

“Why, you look—like—my mother did!” 


CHAPTER IV 


M ORE than a year had passed since that day in 

March when Nettie, the doctor and Cyril 

Stanley had driven along the trail to the cahin on 

the C. P. R. quarter. Slowly but surely, the place 

had changed. The sturdy log house that had grown 

into being represented the efficient labor of young Cyril 

Stanley’s hands. He had built it in the “lay-off time” 

he had taken that summer. Slowly the holes for the 

fence posts were going into the ground around the 

entire quarter. Soon the “home” would be ready for 

the radiant Nettie, and in a few more months Cyril 

would leave the Bar Q, with savings enough to give him 

and Nettie a fair start in life. 

Things had moved also upon the quarter section of 

C. P. R. land where lived in defiant solitude the woman 

who had resented and fought the help forced upon her 

by the gruff Scotch doctor and Nettie Day. 

Her name, it seemed, was Angella Loring, but some 

wag had named her “Mr.” Loring, because of her 

clipped hair and her workingman’s attire, and this 
31 


32 


CATTLE 


name had stuck, though Nettie Day called her “Angel.” 

Her appearance in Yankee Valley had caused the 
usual sensation always created by a strange newcomer. 
There had been the usual wagging of heads and tongues, 
and tapping of foreheads. The woman was a “bug,” 
the farm people of Yankee Valley had decided. At all 
events, she was the kind of “bug” they found it prudent 
to keep at a safe distance. She had met all overtures 
of friendship with hostility and contempt. She was on 
her own land; she desired no commerce with her neigh¬ 
bors; and needed no help. It was nobody’s business 
but her own why she chose to dress and live as she did. 
That was the substance of her replies to those who ven¬ 
tured to call upon her, and when some jocular fellows, 
intent on being smart, pressed their company upon her, 
she demonstrated her ability to shoot straight—at their 
feet, so that for a time a joke ran around the country 
about the number of young “bucks” who limped, and 
for a time the jeering taunt, “Mr. Loring’ll git you if 
you don’t watch out,” was often heard. Thus she be¬ 
came a sort of bugaboo in the popular imagination, but 
as time passed the country grew accustomed to its 
woman hermit and gave her the wide berth she asked for. 

She broke her own land and put in her own crop, 


CATTLE 


33 


inadequately it is true, but with a certain persistence 
and intensity which at first amused, then slowly won 
the grudging respect and wonder of her neighbors. She 
had few implements, and those the antiquated affairs 
used by Dr. McDermott when first he had homesteaded 
in Alberta. Her horses were poor, scrub stock, palmed 
off upon her by Bull Langdon, who sent them down 
with the proposition that she could have the four head 
in exchange for her services on the Bar Q cook car over 
the harvesting period on his grain ranch. Cooks were 
rare and precious in those years when not even a China¬ 
man was to be had for love or money. The woman 
hermit considered the terms for a moment, and then, 
to the surprise of the grinning “hand” who had brought 
both the horses and the proposition, she accepted it. 

She understood horses well enough, but not the kind 
used in Alberta for farming purposes. Her acquaint¬ 
ance had been with the English saddle horses. How 
should she know the type of draught horse necessary 
for the plow, the disc, the harrow and the seeder? So 
she harnessed up the poor stock advanced her by the 
Bull, obtained her seed by application to the Munici¬ 
pality, and her crop went in. Cutworms ate it to the 
ground before it had shown fairly above the soil. 


34 


CATTLE 


Grimly and without altering her air of inimical aloof¬ 
ness, she went to the Bar Q ranch, and over the harvest 
period cooked for thirty or forty men. Throughout 
that time she dealt with the crew in absolute silence, 
cooking and dishing up the “grub” and passing it out 
to them without a word. She had never been known to 
address a voluntary sentence or question to a soul on 
the place, with the single exception of the half-breed 
Jake, who did her chores and wiped the dishes for her. 
When Mrs. Langdon made overtures of friendship to 
her, she curtly told her that she would “quit” if she were 
“interfered” with; she was in charge of the cook car 
and was to be let alone. 

In the fall she broke more land, and in winter she 
shut herself in her shack, and no one, save Dr. McDer¬ 
mott who persisted in calling upon her on his monthly 
rounds, saw her again till the spring, when she put in 
a larger crop than the year before. 

However, time allays even if it does not satisfy the 
hungriest curiosity, and in a country like Alberta, even 
in the present day, we do not scrutinize too closely the 
history or the past of the stranger in our midst. 
Alberta is, in a way, a land of sanctuary, and upon its 
rough bosom the derelicts of the world, the fugitive, the 


CATTLE 


35 


hunted, the sick and the dying have sought asylum and 
cure. The advent of a newcomer, however suspicious 
or strange, causes only a seven days’ wonder and stir. 
Human nature is, of course, the same the world over, 
and in the wake of curiosity, surmise, invention, slander 
reach forth their filthy fingers to bespatter the lives of 
those we do not know. Fortunately, however, curiosity 
is an evanescent quality in the ranching country, partly 
for reasons of time and distance. We cannot shout our 
gossip of a neighbor across hundreds of miles of terri¬ 
tory, and he who toils upon the land from sunrise until 
sunset has no leisure to hustle from door to door with 
evil tales. 

Nevertheless, there was one man in Alberta who knew 
something of the history of this strange woman’s past, 
even if he did not understand why she had sought this 
strange isolation from her fellowmen. 

She had failed to recognize in the country doctor 
who stubbornly forced his society upon her, the stable 
lad who twenty-five years before her father had sent 
away to college in Glasgow. 

Dr. McDermott was one of Alberta’s pioneer workers. 
When settlers followed upon the heels of the missionary 
and the C. P. R., and planted their homesteads on the 


36 


CATTLE 


big raw land, Dr. McDermott was there to care for and 
scold and direct them. He had attended his patients 
all over the country, traveling in those days by any and 
all kinds of primitive vehicle, on horseback, by ox 
wagon, by dog sled, and often on foot, before the roads 
were staked, when there were no lines of barbed wire 
fencing to mark the trail, and when a blizzard meant 
possible blindness and death. He had gone to remote 
places to bring babies into the world, not only gave 
medical aid to the mother but looked after the whole 
household. He knew Alberta as a child knows his 
mother—knew that this “last of the big lands,” as they 
called it, was for those only who were capable of seizing 
life with strong, eager hands. It was no place for the 
weakling, or the feeble of heart, for Alberta was the 
Land of Romance, the Land of Heartbreak, cruel and 
tender, remorseless and kind. 

Free and independent by nature, it seemed incredible 
that the doctor should have come of a race of servitors, 
men who for several generations had served a single 
family, as groom and servant, and always he experi¬ 
enced a deep sense of gratitude to the man who had 
picked him out from amongst the humble McDermotts 
and given him the opportunity for an education. He 


CATTLE 


37 


had worked with the purpose of justifying by his 
achievements his master’s faith in his abilities, and it 
had been a proud day for Angus McDermott when, 
cleared of all encumbrances, free of mortgages and 
taxes paid to date, his land broken and his rugged cabin 
planted upon it, he had deeded the beloved quarter sec¬ 
tion back to the man who had paid for his education. 

Now after the passage of the years, the daughter of 
his former master had come to that bit of Alberta soil, 
seeking in her turn to wrest a living from the land, 
fighting a desperate fight with poverty, disease and the 
blows and buffets of the wild new land which “makes or 
breaks” a man. 

As he rode along the rough roads, chirping absently 
to the old geldings that plugged slowly along, the doc¬ 
tor’s mind persistently traveled back to a sunny day in 
June in the old land. He was a barefooted boy in a 
large stable yard. A little girl was there—a very little 
girl, with thick, brown, curly hair, crushed under a 
Derby hat, and she was leaning over from her seat on 
her pony’s back to coax—to command favors of the 
stable boy. She wished to ride Spitfire. Angus was 
not to tell “Pop,” which was her inelegant term for the 
Earl of Loring. He was to bring the animal around to 


38 


CATTLE 


the far end of the south garden that evening, and she 
would be there under the bushes. He was not to forget, 
mind! He’d be sorry if he did. 

He did not forget. He kept the tryst with the 
daughter of the earl, but he brought not the forbidden 
horse. He well recalled the furious, passionate little 
figure that crawled from out the bush and assailed him 
with bitter reproach and blows. Mechanically, Dr. 
McDermott’s hand went up to the cheek where her crop 
had flashed, and he was moved afresh by the memory 
of the child’s wild imploring voice, begging forgiveness, 
the touch of the small impetuous hand upon his hurt 
face, and the soft smudge of her tear-drenched face 
against his own. 

Twenty-five years ago! He rode on and on through 
the Alberta sunshine, his wide Stetson tilted above a 
rugged face, whose chief charm lay in the sturdy honesty 
of its expression. 


CHAPTER V 


N ETTIE sat listlessly on the single step of the 
Day shack, her hands loosely clasped in her 
lap. The ripening grain gleamed in the sunlight, 
golden as her own thick braids. The field seemed to 
ripple and stir under the breeze that moved over the 
heavily laden stalks. 

This was a crop year, and even upon the rocky land 
of the D. D. D. the grain pushed up resistlessly. Yet 
as she looked out upon those waving fields, which repre¬ 
sented largely the labor of her own and her brothers’ 
hands, Nettie felt no sense of gratification or pride. 
For suddenly her world had changed and darkened. 

The poor, shiftless, happy-go-lucky homesteader of 
the D. D. D. was dead, and of all that family of twelve 
only she remained. County officials had taken away 
the younger ones, who were to be “put out” for adop¬ 
tion, while neighboring farmers had snapped up the 
growing boys, as “likely timber for hard work.” 

The girl was quite alone, not knowing what was to 

become of her, nor whither she could go. She thought 
39 


40 


CATTLE 


vaguely of the great city of Calgary. There she could 
surely find work, but Nettie was a farm girl, and to 
her mind the city meant eternal speed and noise, a 
feverish, rushing activity which would only bewilder and 
terrify her. 

She was a silent girl, given to day-dreaming, and the 
dreams of Nettie Day were humble and simple enough. 
A clean, small cabin on a quarter section of land; a 
cow or two; a few pigs; chickens; fields of grain, oats, 
thick and tall; gleaming, silvery barley; the blue-flower¬ 
ing flax; waves of golden wheat. Overall men upon the 
implements, and herself in a clean kitchen, cooking a 
meal for the harvest hands, and always her dream em¬ 
braced within its circle one whose friendly face was 
tanned and freckled by the sun, whose smile was wide 
and all-embracing, and who looked at Nettie with eyes 
that spoke a language that needed no tongue. 

“Some day soon,” he had said to Nettie, “you and 
me will be in our own home, girl.” 

“Soon” to the Scotch-Ontario boy meant a year or 
two, maybe a year or two more than that; by which time 
the home for Nettie would be snug and complete, with a 
safe nest-egg in the bank or on the range. 

But now everything had changed. Her home had 


CATTLE 


41 


been broken up. There was to be an auction of the 
poor stuff upon the place, to raise the price of the 
mortgage upon the land. 

Nettie felt helpless and forsaken. She missed her 
father and her little brothers and sisters cruelly, and 
dreaded to think how the baby might be faring, so de¬ 
pendent had it been upon her own care. Her gaze wan¬ 
dered irresistibly off to the hills, watching, a lump in 
her throat, for Cyril to come. 

Though unable herself to read or write, Nettie had 
contrived to dispatch word to the rider of the Bar Q, 
through the medium of the half-breed, Jake, who had 
ridden by on the day after her father’s death. She 
could not know that he had been stricken down by a 
fit of the epilepsy, to which he was subject, and long 
delayed on the trail. 

With the noon hour came the farmers and ranchers, 
riding in from far and near, for a country auction in 
Alberta will bring out the people as to a celebration 
or a fair. They came to the Day auction with picnic 
baskets and hampers, in all kinds of vehicles, even by 
automobile or on horseback. 

The auctioneer was a little man, with a barking 
voice. He bustled about the place, appraising the stock 


42 


CATTLE 


and implements, the household effects and furniture. 
The few head of cattle and horses were driven into a 
hastily constructed corral of large logs. Bull Langdon 
held the mortgage upon the D. D. D., and he expected 
to get his money back with compound interest. 

The sale began at the house, the home-made bits of 
furniture telling their own tale of how Nettie and her 
mother had been forced to work. These sold for prac¬ 
tically nothing, and some of them created coarse laugh¬ 
ter, as they were shoved out into the jovial circle of 
farm folk. As bit by bit the familiar pieces were 
brought from the house and dumped upon the ground 
for the amusement and inspection of the farmers, Net¬ 
tie, unable to bear the pain of that pitiful sale, sought 
refuge in the barn, where she stood looking down at the 
fat sow, her father’s especial pride and care, and the 
thirteen young ones that had come with the spring. 
Dry sobs tore her heart, and when a Bar Q “hand” 
spoke to her, she looked up with her drenched face all 
twisted like that of a wounded child’s. 

“ ’Tain’t no use to cry about nothin’,” said Batt 
Leeson, with affected roughness. “Them pigs’ll fetch 
a fancy figger, though five of ’em’s runts.” 

“I w-wasn’t thinkin’ of the pigs,” said Nettie. “I 


CATTLE 


43 


was w-wondering when Cyril Stanley would come. He’s 
—a friend of mine,” she added with a gulp of pride 
through all her grief. 

“Him? Say, he’s up at the purebred camp at 
Barstairs. Gittin’ the herd in shape for the annual 
fair circuit. We got the greatest champeen bulls in 
the world, take it from me. You needn’t look for him, 
girl. He’s on his job.” 

She turned pale at this news, though Cyril had warned 
her of the possibility of his being dispatched to the 
Bull camp at Barstairs. She knew now that it would 
be impossible for him to come. 

With a sickening sense of utter desertion, she re¬ 
turned to where the auction was continuing briskly, and 
with considerable hilarity. The auctioneer was jump¬ 
ing up and down, as a small bull was driven into the 
circle of log fencing. 

“Oh, boys!” yelled the auctioneer (a one-time show¬ 
man), “what have we here? This ain’t no scrub bull! 
Betchu he’s almost pure Hereford! Betchu he’s got a 
good strain of Bar Q in him! Betchu he’s an A No. 1 
calf-thrower. What am I offered? Gentlemen, here’s 
the chance o’ your lifetime.” 

A loud laugh burst from the circle of farmers, and 


CATTLE 


44 

Bull Langdon came closer to the fence, and squinted 
appraisingly at the animal. 

“Dare say he ain’t in prime shape—poor nibblings 
on the D. D. D. as you know, gentlemen, but betchu you 
turn ’im out on some reglar grass, he’ll turn yound and 
’sprize you. They’s the makin’s of a smooth Bull in 
that fellow 1” 

“How old is he?” yelled a wag, making a horn of his 
hands. “Seems like I seen him at D. D. D. when Dan 
Day first pulled in.” 

Before the laughter that swelled up from this sally 
had half died down, a girl’s young savage voice broke 
upon the gathering. Eyes blazing, breathlessly facing 
the circle of rough men, N.ettie sprang to the defense 
of the home product. 

“It’s a lie, Jem Bowers, and you know it! He ain’t 
old. He ain’t more’n six year old, and he just looks 
that way—spare and done, ’cause we never had enough 
feed for our stock. Dad listened to you-all, and staked 
his land on this rocky part, while you got the fat places. 
That bull ain’t old, and don’t you dare say he is. I 
guess I ought to know, ’cause I raised him myself from 
a calf.” 

A silence greeted this outburst from the girl. Eyes 


CATTLE 


45 


shifted, tongues were stuck into cheeks. Compunction 
not unmixed with admiration showed on the faces of 
the farmers, aware possibly for the first time of the 
existence of Nettie, who until then had shrunk into the 
background. Bull Langdon, arms akimbo, had moved 
from his position by the fence, and for the first time 
his appraising eye fell fully upon Nettie. He looked 
the girl over slowly from head to foot, and as his bold 
gaze swept her his eyes slightly bulged and he licked 
his lips. 

Her outburst, probably the first in all her gentle life, 
had left her flushed and breathless, and as her anger 
subsided, she shrank before the united gaze of that 
crowd of rough men gathered to buy up their poor pos¬ 
sessions. She drew back into the shadow of the house 
and the sale went on. 

Soon it was over. Auctioneer and buyers tramped 
across the muddy barnyard to the house, to make their 
reckoning there. As they came to the step Nettie met 
them, her hands spasmodically clasped. 

“Is—everything—sold?” she asked the auctioneer 
quaveringly. 

“Every last thing upon the place gone under the 


46 


CATTLE 


hammer. Did pretty well, I’ll say. Not too bad 
prices.” 

“Then there’ll be something for my brothers and 
sisters ?” 

“Not on your life they won’t. , Scarcely enough to 
satisfy the mortgage and pay up^the debts. You ask 
Mr. Langdon there. He holds the mortgage, and he’s 
bought in most o’ the truck hisself.” 

Nettie turned her head slowly and looked in the face 
of Bull Langdon. Then her head dropped. The Bull 
had stepped forward. One big, thick forefinger went 
up to the auctioneer, as it had risen when he had bought 
head by head the stock and cattle. 

“How about the gell? My wife needs a good strong 
gell for the housework, and I’m willin’ to take her along 
with her dad’s old truck.” 

One of the farmers’ wives, a pale, anemic creature 
who had sidled next to Nettie, whispered: 

“Don’t chu go with him, Nettie. He ain’t no good.” 

As the eye of the Bull fell upon her, the woman 
quailed and, in a panic, she said aloud: 

“Mrs. Langdon’s the kindes’ woman in this country. 
You’d be workin’ for a good woman, Nettie. You’re 
a lucky girl to get the chance.” 


CATTLE 


47 


All that Nettie was thinking then was that Cyril 
Stanley worked for the Bar Q. She would be near 
Cyril; they would meet, perhaps, daily. That thought 
sent her toward Bull Langdon with a hopeful light in 
the eyes she raised shyly, though fearfully, toward him. 

“I’ll go, Mr. Langdon,” said Nettie Day. “I got to 
get a place anyway, and I might as well go along with 
you.” 

The Bull withdrew his glance. Finger up again he 
summoned his “hands.” 

“Round up them dogies, you Buzz. You, Batt, bring 
along the pigs in the wagon. Damn you, Block, git 
them horses back. Where in the h— d’yer think we’re 
rangin’? You, Boob, roll off o’ your horse there. Sad¬ 
dle that pinto for the gell. Here, tighter on the cinch. 
Shorten them stirrups. Here, gell!” 

His big hand went under her arm, helping her to 
mount the horse, but it closed over the smooth yielding 
flesh, pressing it hard. As he tested the length of the 
stirrups, he looked up into her face with such an ex¬ 
pression that she was suddenly filled with alarm and 
terror. His big hand continued to tug at the stirrup 
strap, his arm pressing against her knee, and she said 
hastily: 


48 


CATTLE 


“Let ’em alone. Them stirrup’s is all right. I like 
them long.” 

She shoved her foot into the leather thong and, slap¬ 
ping the horse across the neck with the reins, she urged 
it along. She had a sudden impulse to flee, though 
from what she could not have said; she was possessed 
with a furious urge to leave far behind her the huge 
cowman, with his wild, possessive eyes. 

She flew along the trail at a breathless gallop, and 
it was only when his hand reached across the neck of 
her horse and planted itself upon the pummel of her 
saddle that she realized that he had never left her side. 

“Hi, there, you don’t want to run as a starter. Take 
it easy.” 

On and on they went, across country, past the wide- 
spreading pasture and grain fields, odorous of the bum¬ 
per crop which that year was to put Alberta upon the 
grain map of the world, past the homely little log cabin 
that Cyril had built for her, and past the C. P. R. 
quarter, where the cropped-haired woman lived in her 
hermit-like seclusion. On and on, till the higher grades 
began and they climbed gradually upward toward the 
hill country. 

Straight ahead, under a sunset that overspread the 


CATTLE 


49 


whole shy with a glow of red and gold, the mighty 
Rocky Mountains rose like a vast dream before them. 
The girl and the man rode side by side into that sunset, 
while the perfect stillness of the Alberta evening closed 
in about them. Nettie lost herself once more in her old 
aspirations as the nearness of the long-yearned-for 
hills drew nearer. Sweet and wistful thoughts of 
Cyril calmed and reassured her. The man riding be¬ 
side her was forgotten, forgotten everything but the 
spell of the Alberta twilight, and the dear thoughts of 
her love. 

At last they drew up before one of those great 
Alberta ranch gates, with log rails ten feet long. The 
Bull had alighted and opened the gate, and they were 
cantering up the hill. 

In Alberta the sunlight lingers till late into the night, 
and a mellow glow suffuses the land, gilding even the 
meanest spots and turning all the country into dim 
oceans and atolls of beauty. Under this light, the 
white and green ranch buildings of the Bar Q shone like 
a little city planted upon a hilltop, and at this first 
sight of the great Bar Q the girl from the Dan Day 
Dump caught her breath in awe and admiration. 

The Bull had again dismounted, and Nettie, with his 


50 


CATTLE 


hand under her arm, also found herself lifted to the 
ground; but instead of withdrawing his arm, the cow¬ 
man kept it about her possessively, and drew her closely 
to his side. She stared, fascinated, into the face so 
close to her own. 

“That pinto’s yours, gell,” said Bull Langdon, “and 
if you’re the right kind o’ gell, and treat the Bull right, 
it’s the first o’ the presents you’ll be gettin’!” 

Nettie shrank back, but she tried valiantly to hide 
her fear and repulsion. She said breathlessly: 

“I don’t want nothing that I don’t earn.” 

At that the Bull laughed—a big, coarse chuckle. 

“You’ll get all that’s cornin’ to you, gell,” he said. 


CHAPTER VI 


1 IFE was pleasant for Nettie Day at the Bar Q, 
where, in the pink and white gingham house 
dresses supplied by Mrs. Langdon, she looked prettier 
every day. 

The clean and spacious ranch house, shining with 
sunlight, was a revelation to the girl who had lived all 
of her life in the two rooms of the poor shack with her 
parents and her nine little brothers and sisters. 

It flattered the vanity of Bull Langdon to have a 
“show place” on the Banff National Highway. He had 
built the main ranch house upon the crest of a hill that 
commanded the road to Banff, and the wide, rambling 
buildings, ornate in design and brightly painted, had 
been placed where they would show up well from the 
road, so that all who traveled along the highway would 
slow up for a view of the Bar Q. 

Nettie’s advent was both a surprise and a joy to the 
wife of the cattleman, who took a childish pride in at 
last “keeping a girl.” 


51 


52 


CATTLE 


For a number of years the Bar Q had maintained a 
cook car, whither the “hands” went for “grub.” It was 
on such a vehicle that Angela Loring had served. Now 
a thin and musty smelling Chinaman dominated the car, 
a shrinking, silent figure, who banged down the chow 
before the men, and paid no heed to protest or squabble, 
save when the “boss” came in, when Chum Lee became 
frenziedly busy. In winter, the Chinaman was moved 
to the Pure-Bred Bull camp at Barstairs, and the men 
left at the foothill ranch, “batched” in the bunkhouses. 

Though the main cooking was done on the cook car, 
there yet remained an enormous amount of work at the 
ranch house, for besides the housework, the bread and 
butter for the ranch were made there by Mrs. Langdon. 
She “put dow r n” the pork in brine, cured and smoked it; 
made hundreds of pounds of lard, sausage meat, head¬ 
cheese, corned beef and other meat products. She made 
the soap, looked after the poultry and vegetable gar¬ 
den, she canned quantities of fruit and vegetables for 
the winter months. She was always working, always 
running hither and thither about the house, hurrying 
to “have things ready,” for her husband had a greedy 
appetite, and her mind was exclusively occupied in de- 


CATTLE 


53 


vising ways and means of propitiating and pacifying 
him. 

Of late, however, her health had been visibly failing. 
The long years of hard work, the tragedy of the yearly 
still-born baby, life and association with the overbear¬ 
ing cattleman had gradually taken their toll of the 
strength of Bull Langdon’s wife. 

Bull was what is known in the cattle world as a 
“night rider.” In the earlier days it was said he did 
all of his “dirty work” at night, moving and driving 
bunches of cattle under cover of darkness. Rivalry, 
strife and bitter enmity are a commonplace of life in 
the cattle country, and the Bull vented his vindictive 
spite upon his neighbors by slipping their herds out of 
pastures and corrals, and driving them over the tops 
of canyon and precipice. Those incursions were, how¬ 
ever, events of the past. The cowman was cautious 
now that he had arrived at a place of security and 
power. Rustling and stealing were dangerous under¬ 
takings in those days when the trails had turned into 
highways, and small ranches were beginning to dot the 
edges of the range. Moreover, the mounted police were 
less easy to influence and intimidate than the former 
Indian agents had been. 


54 ? 


CATTLE 


Night riding had remained one of his habits, however, 
and one that told heavily upon the wife, who would 
always wait up for his return, with supper always in¬ 
gratiatingly ready. 

For some time symptoms of a coming breakdown 
had been ominously evident to Mrs. Langdon, but she 
persistently fought against the prospect of becoming 
an invalid. She had an ingenuous faith, imbibed from 
tracts and books that had drifted into her hands in her 
teaching days; she denied the existence of evil, pain or 
illness in the world, and when it pushed its ugly fist 
into her face, or wracked her frail body, she had a little 
formula that she bravely recited over and over again, 
like an incantation, in which she asserted that it was 
an error; that she was in the best of health, and that 
everything in the world was good and beautiful and in 
the image of God. Whether she deluded herself or not, 
it is certain that this desperate philosophy, if such it 
could be called, was the crutch that had upheld her and 
kept her sane throughout the turbulent years of her life 
with Bull Langdon, so that she had never lost her faith 
in mankind, and had remained curiously innocent of 
wrong. 

She hailed Nettie’s coming, therefore, as a “demon- 


CATTLE 


55 


stration” of her faith, and welcomed the strong, willing, 
cheerful girl with a grateful heart and open arms. 

It was pleasant for a change, to take things easy; 
to have all the heavier work done by the tall, competent 
girl, and, better than the relief from the hard labor, 
was the companionship of another woman in the ranch 
house. Only a woman who has been isolated long from 
her own sex can appreciate what it means when an¬ 
other woman comes into her life. 

Nettie would place a rocking chair for her mistress 
on the back veranda, bring the basket of mending, and 
with her slow, shy smile, say: 

“Now, Mrs. Langdon, you fall to on them socks, and 
leave me to do the work.” 

This Mrs. Langdon would do, and Nettie would bring 
her work on to the veranda, the one sewing or crochet¬ 
ing, the other churning and working the butter, knead¬ 
ing the bread or preparing the vegetables for the day. 
Work thus became a pleasure, and Mrs. Langdon’s soft 
voice chattering of many happy topics made a pleasant 
accompaniment to their work. If Nettie went indoors 
to work, Mrs. Langdon soon followed her. She took 
pride in teaching Nettie her own special recipes, and 
they would both laugh and exclaim over the mistakes 


56 


CATTLE 


or success of the girl, who was all eagerness to learn. 
Slowly a feeling warmer than mere friendship drew the 
two women together. 

Although it was against the rules for the Bar Q 
“hands” to come to the ranch house, save when sum¬ 
moned by the Bull, or on some special errand, Nettie’s 
presence there was widely known and commented upon, 
and many were the ingenious devices invented by the 
men to obtain a sight of or a word with the girl. Bull, 
however, was more than ever on the watch for an in¬ 
fraction of this rule, and more than one employee found 
himself fired for loitering in the neighborhood of the 
ranch house or suffered the indignity and pain of a 
blow from the boss’s heavy hand. Harvest time came 
at last to the prairie, where Bull Langdon had a great 
grain ranch, and thither the owner of the Bar Q de¬ 
parted to superintend the harvesting operations. 

From time immemorial lovers have found a way to 
meet, and Cyril and Nettie were not long in solving their 
own problem. 

Nettie would slip from the house after supper, for 
Mrs. Langdon went early to bed, as farmers do. Be¬ 
tween the house and a clump of willows there was a 
small field, behind it a deep coulee, where the wild rasp- 


CATTLE 


57 


berries and gooseberries grew in profusion. There, 
hidden by the thick growth, Nettie would go to pick 
berries, stopping ever and anon to listen for a sound 
that only she and Cyril understood, the long-drawn 
whistle that was like the call of an oriole. At the sound 
of that musical note, Nettie would stop picking, and, 
with parted lips, shining eyes and beating heart, she 
would wait for her lover to come to her in the deep bush. 

This was the season when the daylight lingered far 
into the night; when the soft light of the late sun lay 
romantically upon the still and sleeping land. Young 
Cyril and Nettie would sit on a knoll, with the berry 
bushes all about and above and below them, and with 
clasped hands, thrilling at each other’s nearness, they 
would murmur their joyful confidences and hopes. 

Cyril was what the country folk would have described 
as “slow” with girls, and Nettie was as innocent as a 
child. She had never had companions of her own age, 
not even a girl friend, and Cyril was her first “beau.” 
This simple holding of hands was rapture for these two, 
an exciting adventure that made them tremble with a 
vague longing for something more. With the clumsy 
shyness of the country boy who has known no women, 
it had taken Cyril two weeks to find courage and power 


58 


CATTLE 


to put his arm awkwardly about the girl’s waist. That 
daring progress, full of joyous excitement, was the 
prelude to something he had not foreseen. The close 
pressure of the girl’s warm young body against his, the 
involuntary raising of her face, as it almost touched 
his own, brought the inevitable consequence. For the 
first time in either of their lives they kissed. Lost in 
that single, ever closer embrace, time and place, knowl¬ 
edge of all else on earth, vanished from their minds as, 
amidst the dense berry bushes, they clung ecstatically 
together. 

Upon their blissful dream, a harsh voice broke. Even 
as they drew apart, still heavy with the lassitude of the 
new rapture they had but just discovered, they dimly 
recognized the voice of Bull Langdon. From some¬ 
where in the direction of the corrals, he was calling for 
his “hands.” They could hear him cursing, and knew 
he must have ridden up noiselessly, and annoyed at 
finding no one about the place was venting his temper 
in this fashion. 

“Oh, my!” murmured Mettie, drawing half out of 
Cyril’s arms and unconsciously leaning towards him, 
“he’ll be wantin’ you, Cyril.” 

“Let’m want,” said the boy, hungry again to feel 


CATTLE 


59 


the touch of those warm lips upon his own. “I’m 
not workin’ nights for no man, and if he ain’t satis¬ 
fied, I guess I can quit any old time now. You say 
the word when, Nettie. I’m ready for you, girl. And 
Nettie—give us another kiss, will you?” 

“Oh, Cyril, I got to get to the house. Mrs. Lang- 
don’s gone to bed, and he’ll be lookin’ for something 
to eat, and it’s not her place to get his meals when 
I’m here to do the work.” 

“You won’t have to work for no one but me soon, 
Nettie. I’ll take care of you for the rest of your 
days. Nettie, I never kissed a girl before. That is 
true as God.” 

“Neither did I—never kissed a fellow.” 

“Kiss me again, then.” 

This time she remained in his arms for a moment 
only as the clamorous voice of Bull Langdon was 
heard close at hand, his words, causing Nettie to 
tear herself away in fear. 

“Where’s that gell? Why ain’t she on her job?” 

Nettie clambered up the slope of the coulees and 
went running across the grass to the house. As she 
paused at the wide opened door, her basket still on her 
arm, Bull Langdon, now in his seat, his legs stretched 


60 


CATTLE 


out before him, turned around to stare at her, his 
fierce, covetous glance, as always, holding her fasci¬ 
nated and breathless with vague terror. 

“Where’ve ye been at this early hour of the night?” 

“I been picking berries,” faltered Nettie, trying 
vainly to steady her voice. 

“Oh, you have, heh?” 

Her cheeks were redder than any berries that ever 
grew and her eyes shone star bright. Her white bosom 
rose and fell with the thrill of her late adventure and 
her sudden fear. 

“Pickin’ berries in the night, huh? You’re smart, 
ain’t you?” 

“Oh, yes, it was light as day you see and I don’t 
mind-” 

“Let’s see what you got.” 

He reached out seemingly for the basket, but his 
hand closed over the handle upon hers. Gripping it 
tightly with his other hand he lifted the cover and 
peered into the empty basket. 

“Let go my hand!” she cried in a stifled voice. 
“You’re hurtin’ me!” 

Eor answer he possessed himself of the other and 
steadily drew her nearer and nearer to him. She 



CATTLE 


61 


struggled and twisted in his grasp, suppressing her 
desire to scream for fear that her mistress might hear. 
But, in fact, it was the clip clop of Mrs. Langdon’s 
loose bedroom slippers on the stairs that brought her 
release. 

Mrs. Langdon, her hair in paper curlers and with 
a gray flannellete kimono thrown over her night dress, 
hurried down the stairs. 

“Oh, Bill—” She was the only person who never 
called him “Bull”—“is it you? Are you back? I’m 
so sorry I didn’t hear you get in or Pd a been down 
at once. We’ll have something ready for you in a 
minute. Nettie, bring some of that fresh headcheese, 
and cut it from the new bowl, mind you, and maybe 
Mr. Langdon’d like something to drink too. You 
made butter today, didn’t you? Well, bring some fresh 
buttermilk, or maybe you’d like something hot to 
drink. Which’d you rather have, Bill?” 

He never replied to her many light questions and 
she seldom expected him to. She nodded and smiled 
at Nettie and the girl hurried to the pantry. Mrs. 
Langdon fluttered about her husband, helping him to 
remove his heavy riding boots and coat, and putting 
away his hat and gauntlets. He endured her minis- 


62 


CATTLE 


trations, but in spite of her chatter and numerous 
questions he remained curiously silent. When Nettie 
brought the tray with its fresh cut homemade head¬ 
cheese and thick layer cake and buttermilk he drew 
up before it and ate in a sort of absorbed silence. 

“Will you be wanting me any more tonight, Mrs. 
Langdon?” asked N'ettie. 

“No, Nettie, thank you. Run along to bed. If Mr. 
Langdon needs anything else I’ll get it. Good-night, 
dear.” 

Bull, having finished the last of the food before 
him, reached for his boots and began again to pull 
them on. 

“Oh, Bill, you’re not goin’ out again, are you?” 
exclaimed Mrs. Langdon with nervous anxiety. 

He tightened his belt without speaking, his big 
chest swelling under his moosehide shirt. Spurs rat¬ 
tling, he tramped across the room and out into the 
yard. 

At the bunkhouse lights were out and all hands save 
one abed. Cyril sat on the edge of his bunk, still 
dressed, chin cupped in his hands, giving himself up 
to his dreams. 

The great bulk of the cattleman filled the doorway. 


CATTLE 


63 


His forefinger up, he beckoned to Cyril. The young 
man stood up and with a glance back at his sleeping 
mates he joined his employer outside the bunkhouse. 

Clenched hands on hips, a characteristic attitude, 
the Bull scrutinized in the now steadily deepening dusk 
of the night the young fellow sturdily and coolly facing 
him, apparently unmoved and unafraid. 

“Want chu to be ready first thing in the morning 
to ride over to Barstairs. Want chu to git them bulls 
in shape for the circuit. Goin’ to exhibit in St. Louis, 
Kansas City, Chicago, San Francisco and other cities 
in the States. You do well by the bunch here and 
there’s a bonus on your pay and you go along with 
the herd to the U. S.” 

Until this night the unexpected promotion would 
have elated Cyril. Now, in spite of his astonishment, 
he hesitated, and in his slow Scotch way turned the 
matter over in his mind. After a moment he said: 

“I don’t know as I want the job, boss. Fact is, 
I’m thinkin’ of quittin’. Thinkin’ of goin’ on my own.” 

“On your own! You ain’t got nothin’ to go on 
your own with.” 

“I got my homestead. House’s built, land partly 
fenced. I traded in my cattle for implements and I 


CATTLE 


got six head of horses left, and that’s not too bad 
as a starter.” 

“How far d’you think you can git on that much 
unless you got a stake behind you?” 

The young man weighed this question thoughtfully 
and carefully. A bit sadly he replied: 

“Not very far, but it’ll do as a starter, and next 
year-” 

“Next year ain’t here yet. Besides it depends on 
what you’re countin’ on. You aimin’ to get married?” 

Somehow the question infuriated the Bull so that 
he shot it at the boy, despite his effort at self-control 
and his eyes blazed through the darkness. But Cyril 
was too absorbed in his own dreams to note the Bull’s 
voice or manner. After a pause he answered slowly. 

“Yes.” 

“You can’t raise no family on what you got now,” 
said the Bull hoarsely. “Things ain’t the same as when 
I started in. You better wait a year or two. Take 
on this proposition I’m offerin’ you and you’ll be in 
better shape to do the right thing by the gell you 
marry then. There’s a ten dollar a month raise for 
you and a bonus of a hundred at the end of the 


season. 


CATTLE 


65 


A long pause, as this sunk into Cyril, and he slowly 
weighed the matter in his mind. A few months more 
or less would matter little to him and Nettie. The 
money would mean a lot. There were certain articles 
he had set his heart on buying for Nettie for the 
house, household utensils, of which a country travel¬ 
ing salesman, who had put up overnight at the Bar Q, 
had shown him enticing samples. Soon his mind was 
made up. 

“Maybe you’re right, boss. I’m on. Barstairs, eh? 
I’ll be on the job first thing in the morning.” 

But when he rode out in the quiet dawn, with no 
one but Jake to bid him good-by, Cyril’s heart was 
heavy, and as he went by the ranch house his glance 
sought Nettie’s window, in the vain hope that she 
might by some chance be up and in sight. He had 
given Jake a message for her and felt sure that she 
would understand. It was a common occurrence for 
riders to be despatched on such trips as this, and Cyril 
was of a race that always puts duty before pleasure. 
Farsighted and canny, he was prepared to serve and 
wait an extra year if need be for the girl he loved. 

At the thought of that future, shared with Nettie, 
his heart lifted. The grayness of the approaching 


66 


CATTLE 


dawn grew slowly lighter and the miracle of the sun¬ 
rise broke over the sleeping land. Far and wide on all 
sides stretched an incomparable sky, a shadowy, gilded 
loveliness, as if a misty veil were slowly being un¬ 
rolled till there burst into full bloom the marvelous 
sunglow of Alberta. Cyril’s spirits rose with the sun 

t 

and as his horse loped along the trail to Barstairs he 
lifted up his young voice and sang. 


CHAPTER VII 


T HE days were getting longer. The fall round-up 
was under way and the Bull rode the range with 
his men. For a week long files of cattle had been 
pouring down from the hills to meet in the lower 
pastures of the ranch and automatically form into 
symmetrical rank that moved lowing before the drivers 
to the corrals and pens where they were sorted over 
and separated. 

It was a period of torture for the cattle for the 
Bar Q branded, dehorned and weaned in the early fall. 
Day and night the incessant crying of over two thou¬ 
sand calves and outraged mothers, penned in separate 
fields or corrals, rent the air. 

The round-up was an early and swift one that year 
for Bull Langdon was due to leave in early November 
for the States with his purebred bulls. He seemed 
possessed of inexhaustible energy and vitality and no 
amount of riding appeared to tire him. It was no 
uncommon thing for him after a night and day of rid¬ 
ing to bring up finally at the ranch house at midnight 
67 


68 


CATTLE 


and sit down to the big meal prepared by the girl 
whom he would summon with a thump upon her door. 
Little conversation passed between them at these times, 
but once when the cattleman had volunteered the infor¬ 
mation that they were about through Nettie said, with 
apparent relief: 

“Then there will be no more branding. I’m glad 
of that.” 

The cattleman leaned across the table, his elbows 
upon it and a knife and fork in either hand. His mean¬ 
ing glance pinned the girl fairly. 

“One more head,” he said. “I’ll put my personal 
brand upon that maverick before I go.” 

She felt as if an icy hand were clutching at her 
heart. 

The following day she was sent to Morley, an Indian 
trading post, where was the nearest post office for the 
Bar Q mail. It was eight miles from the ranch and 
Nettie went on horseback, returning in about two and 
a half hours, in time to get the supper. 

There was no one about the place when she rode into 
the corrals. Dismounting, she unsaddled her horse, 
hung bridle and saddle in the barn, and let the horse 
out to pasture. Hurrying to the house she found the 


CATTLE 


69 


big kitchen deserted. Usually when the girl went off 
on long errands Mrs. Langdon prepared the supper, 
but Nettie supposed her mistress was taking her after¬ 
noon nap. So she busied herself with the preparation 
of the supper. She peeled the potatoes and set them 
on the range, quickly beat up a pan of buttermilk bis¬ 
cuits and put them in the oven. Her table set, she 
sliced the cold meat and put the kettle on for tea. 

Having finished, and there being still no sign of 
Mrs. Langdon, she ran upstairs and tapped upon her 
door. There was no reply. Nettie opened the door 
and looked in. The room was empty and the wide-open 
closet door revealed the fact that it had been stripped. 

A wave of fear swept over the girl; she ran panting 
downstairs and out into the barnyard. Not a “hand” 
was about, though far across the pastures she could 
see the fence riders riding toward the ranch, their 
day’s work done. Jake, driving in the six milk cows, 
came over the crest of the hill and loped slowly down 
to the barnyard, stopping to water his horse. He did 
not see Nettie at first waiting for him at the cowshed 
and when he did began to jabber without dismounting. 
One by one the cows went into their stalls and stood, 
bags full, patiently waiting to be milked. Jake, full 


70 


CATTLE 


of his news, dismounted. He had a pronounced im¬ 
pediment in his speech and when excited became almost 
unintelligible. 

“Mis’ Langdon—her gone off—off—off-” He 

pointed vividly toward the mountains. “Rode on 
nortermobile to a station. Goin’ far away on train— 
choo-choo—coo!” 

Nettie stared at him blankly. She could barely un¬ 
derstand the bare fact that her mistress was gone 
and in her anxiety she plied the boy with questions. 

“Where had she gone? When? Who had gone with 
her? Why did she go? What had she taken? How 
long was she to be gone?” 

As desperately she shook the half-breed’s ragged 
sleeve in her impatience to make him understand her 
the honk of an automobile horn caused her to look 
toward the garage and there she saw the Bull backing 
in the car. She hurried across the barnyard, her fear 
of the man forgotten in her intense anxiety about her 
mistress. 

In his characteristic pose at the wide door of the 
garage he awaited her approach. 

“Is—is it true that Mrs. Langdon has gone away?” 



CATTLE 


71 


“Yep. Just taken her to the station. Gone up to 
Banff.” 

“Banff! Will she be gone for long?” 

She hardly realized that her lips were quivering and 
her eyes were so full of tears that she could not see the 
strange expression on the Bull’s face as he looked down 
gloatingly upon her. 

The soft golden sunset was all about them and the 
brooding hush of the closing day lent a beauty and 
stillness to the evening that was full of poetry, but the 
man, with his calculating, bulging eyes, saw nothing 
but her softly maturing loveliness, the rounded curve 
of her bosom, the white softness of her neck, the rose 
that came and went in her cheeks, the scarlet lips that 
aroused in his breast a tormenting passion such as he 
had never experienced for any woman before. 

Nettie repeated her question, her voice catching in 
the sob that would come despite her best efforts. With 
the going of both Cyril and her mistress she felt de¬ 
serted and forlorn. 

“Will she be gone long I asked you?” 

“Long enough to suit me,” said the Bull slowly. 
“She’s took a holiday. Guess she’s entitled to one now 
we’ve got a gell like you to take her place up to the 


72 


CATTLE 


house. Pm thinking you’ll fill the bill fine and suit 
me down to a double T. Is supper ready?” 

She stared up at him through the haze before her 
eyes, piteously, her lips moving, almost as if entreat¬ 
ing him. She tried to say: 

“It’ll be on the table in a few minutes,” but the words 
came indistinctly through the tears which now began 
to fall heavily in spite of her effort to restrain them. 
Blindly she moved toward the house, holding her apron 
to her face. Absorbed in her grief, she was unconscious 
of the fact that the Bull pressed close to her side and 
that it was his big hand under her arm that guided her 
to the house. Inside the kitchen he held her for a 
space as she gasped and cried: 

“I won’t stay here alone.” 

“Yer don’t have to, gell,” said the Bull huskily. 
“I’m here.” 

“You!” 

She wrenched her arm free. 

“I’m not going to stay in this house alone with 
you \” she cried. 

“Ain’t you? Mebbe you’d prefer the bunkhouses 
then?” 

The Bull was chuckling coarsely. 


CATTLE 


73 


“I won’t stay nowhere at Bar Q. I’m goin’ to get 
out—tonight.” 

“As you say, gell. I told the wife not to set too 
much store by you, but no, she’d have her way. Said 
you could take her place and do the work fine, and she 
thought she should do as the doctor said and git away 
for a change.” 

Nettie paused, the thought of her mistress’s confi¬ 
dence in her holding her in her headlong purpose to 
escape. 

“So I could do the work alone. It’s not that. It’s 
just that—that I’m afraid to be here alone—with 
you,” she blurted out. 

“Far’s that goes, I’m hikin’ for Barstairs myself 
tonight. Goin’ on up to the Bull camp. We’re leavin’ 
for the States shortly, and I got to go alone.” 

Something was burning on the stove and she rushed 
to lift off the potatoes. The Bull had seated himself 
at the table and was buttering a chunk of bread. Net¬ 
tie hesitated a moment and then, as the man appar¬ 
ently oblivious of or indifferent to her presence con¬ 
tinued to munch in abstracted silence, Nettie took her 
place at the table. She poured out the tea and passed 
his cup to him, helping herself to a piece of the cold 


74 


CATTLE 


roast pork. The potato dish was to the left of him 
and after a moment she timidly asked him to pass it 
to her. He shoved the dish across without looking up 
and continued to “pack down”—an expression of his 
own—the food. 

The meal came to an end in this strange silence 
and afterwards she cleared the table and washed the 
dishes, acutely aware of every move the man made 
in the big room. He had taken down his sheepskin 
riding coat and pushed his legs into fur chapps. The 
spurs clanked as he snapped them onto his heels. He 
took down the quirt and huge hat hanging to a deer 
head’s horns, clapped the hat upon his head, and 
tramped to the door. All his preparations indicated 
a long ride. At the door he threw back an order to 
Nettie. 

“Anyone telephones, I’ll reach Barstairs by six or 
seven in the mornin’. They can get me there. Have 
Jake at the house for chores. Let ’im sleep off the 
kitchen.” 

She nodded dumbly, conscious only of a vast sense of 
relief. He was gone. 


CHAPTER VIII 


N EVER had the ranch house seemed so large or 
so empty. A wave of homesickness over¬ 
whelmed the lonely girl, a terrible longing to see her 
little brothers and sisters, now so widely scattered 
about the country, and be with them once again. 

The days were gradually shortening and when the 
light faded about ten o’clock darkness closed silently 
in upon the hill country. Though the days were sunny 
the nights were very quiet and somewhat chilly. 

Nettie Day knelt by her window. She could see the 
lights in the row of bunkhouses and someone moving 
about the corrals with a lantern in his hand. How long 
she knelt by her window she could not have said, but 
she felt no inclination for sleep and put off preparing 
for bed as long as possible. 

The vast silence of the hills seemed to press down 
about the place and in the utter stillness of the night 
the low wailing of a hungry coyote in the hills awakened 

weird echoes. A healthy, placid girl, nerves had never 
75 


76 


CATTLE 


troubled Nettie; yet on that night she experienced a 
psychic premonition of disaster, and when the depres¬ 
sion weighed unbearably down upon her she called to 
Jake from her window. 

Stick on shoulder, the breed came from the kitchen 
door and grinned up at her in the dusk. Jake was 
in one of his periods of delusions and as sentry before 
an Indian war camp he patrolled fearlessly but with 
catlike caution. His mere presence, however, com¬ 
forted her, but her cheek blanched as the breed returned 
to the house, gave a startled cry—the cry of a man 
struck suddenly. She said to herself: 

“Jake’s playing! I guess he’s shootin’ at himself 
with his old arrows. My, he’s a queer one.” 

Long since the twinkling lights in the bunkhouses 
had disappeared one by one as the men “turned in.” 
The “hands” of the Bar Q were early risers and “hit 
the bunks” as soon as the light left the sky. 

The last sign of life had vanished. Even the coyote 
was silent and the darkness grew ever deeper. 

Nettie turned from her window at last. Her long 
plaits of hair hung down, like a Marguerite’s, on her 
shoulders. In her white night dress she looked very 
virginal and sweet. She had raised her hands and 


CATTLE 


77 


begun to coil up the golden braids when something— 
a stealthy, cautious motion—caused her to pause. She 
stood still in the middle of the room, her eyes wide and 
startled, staring at the door. 

The bureau stood by the door and a lamp burned on 
it. Slowly the knob turned and she felt something push 
against the frail door which she had, however, locked. 

Though well-nigh paralyzed with fear she found 
strength to seize her one chair and thrust its back un¬ 
derneath the knob so that its two back legs firmly on the 
floor might help the now loudly cracking door to resist 
the force that was slowly pushing it in. She blew out 
the light and retreated towards the window. 

There was the sound of snapping steel and the lock 
was burst. The upturned chair quivered on its two 
back feet, held sturdily in place a moment and then 
splintered under the iron strength of the man without. 

As the door gave way a numbness came upon her and, 
without power to move, like some fascinated thing, she 
watched the approach of the Bull. She knew that she 
was trapped and clutching her throat with both hands 
she tried to force to her lips the cry that would not 
come. 

She was in a black dream, a merciless nightmare. 


78 


CATTLE 


She awoke, screaming wildly: 

“Cyril, Cyril, Cyril! Cyril! Cyril'” and over and 
over again, “Cyril!” 

Like on£ gone stark mad she groped her way to the 
window and threw herself out. 

When she regained consciousness the bright, hard sun 
was in her eyes. She stared up at a brilliant blue sky. 
Jake knelt on the grass beside her and tried to move 
her to the shadow of the house. She moaned: 

“Leave me be. I want to die.” 

Jake muttered excitedly: 

“Him! Him! Him see—him hurt Nettie. Last 
night him hurt Jake bad.” 

“Him!” She knew whom Jake meant by “him” and 
threw up her arm as if to shield herself from a blow. 
At that moment his shadow loomed above her and 
she cowered and cringed from it. 

“How’d you git here?” He looked up at the win¬ 
dow. “You got to cut out this damn nonsense. I ain’t 
aimin’ to hurt you, but you can’t lay out here. Here, 
I’ll carry you into the house. Keep still, will yer? 
D’you want me to tie you?” 

Her struggles ceased. Eyes closed, she submitted 
limply as he lifted her in his arms and carried her to 


CATTLE 


79 


the house. Jake followed, wringing his hands and 
whimpering like a dog. 

On the fourth day, holding to the bannisters, she 
managed to limp downstairs. For a long time she sat 
on the hard kitchen chair, staring with unseeing eyes 
before her. Even when she heard the heavy tramp of 
the Bull’s feet on the outside porch she did not raise 
her head and as he came in her hopeless gaze remained 
still fixed on space. 

“Hello I Whatchu doin’ down here? How’d you 
get down here?” 

“I come down myself,” said Nettie listlessly. “My 
ankle ain’t hurtin’ me no more.” 

“I’d a’ carried you down if you asked me,” he 
grunted angrily. “I done everything a man could for 
a girl. Who’s been waiting on you hand and foot these 
last four days just’s if you was a delicate lady instead 
of a hired girl on a ranch. What more d’you want? 
The more you do for some folks the more they want.” 

Nettie said nothing, but two great tears suddenly 
rolled out of her eyes and splashed slowly down her 
cheeks. She resented those tears—a sign of weakness, 
where she felt hard and frozen within, and she peevishly 
brushed them away. 


80 


CATTLE 


“What you cryin’ about ?” 

“I jus’ want that you should let me alone,” said 
Nettie. 

“You’ll be let alone soon enough now. I got to go 
to Barstairs, and I got to go on to the States. We’re 
billed up at the fairs over there, and I got to go along 
with my bulls. I’d take you with me if it wasn’t for 
that young buck at Barstairs. I ain’t plannin’ on 
sharing you with no one, do you get me? You belong 
to Bull Langdon. I got you at the sale, same’s I got 
the rest of your dad’s old truck, and what the Bull 
gets his hands on he keeps. It’s up to yourself how 
you git treated. I’m free handed with them that treats 
me right. My old woman ain’t strong. She’ll croak 
one of these days and ’twon’t be long before they’ll be 
another Mrs. Langdon at Bar Q. You treat the Bull 
right and you’ll be the second Mrs. Langdon.” 

Nettie twisted her hands in her apron. Her heart 
ached dully and at the mention of her mistress’s name 
a fierce lump rose persistently in her throat. 

“Well, what you got to say to that?” 

She did not answer and he pursued wrathfully : 

“You’re sulking now and you’re sore on me, but 
you’ll get over that, gell. I’ll knock it out of your sys- 


CATTLE 


81 


tem damn soon if you don’t, and you’ll find out that 
it’ll pay you to be on the right side of the Bull rather 
than the wrong.” 

“I ain’t aiming to make you mad,” said Nettie 
piteously, shrinking under the implied threat. He 
chuckled, relishing his power. 

“Well, I’ll be off. If it weren’t for them bulls noth¬ 
ing could take me from you now, gell, but I ain’t fool 
enough to neglect my bulls for a gell. I’m goin’ along 
with the herd far as St. Louis, and I’ll be back to you 
before the month is out.” 

His big lips closed over hers. The loathsome em¬ 
brace seemed to strangle her. Then she was alone again. 

She sat in the kitchen for more than an hour after 
the departure of the Bull, still in that attitude of 
stupefied apathy, then limped upstairs, into her room, 
closed the battered door, and sat down on the edge of 
her bed, holding her head in her hands. She had no 
feeling save that of intense weariness and dead despair. 
Presently, still dressed, she fell sideways upon the 
bed and slept the long, unbroken sleep of one physi¬ 
cally and mentally exhausted. 


CHAPTER IX 


P ART of journal kept by Lady Angella Loring: 

I hate men and despise women. I am afraid 
of children. Animals are my only friends. 

Pm not pretty. My face is hard, my hair—what is 
left of it—of no color. My hands are calloused. I 
am a “tough old nut” as once I heard a “hand” of the 
Bar Q describe me. I wear men’s clothes because they 
are comfortable and because I want to forget that I 
am a woman. 

My father was the victim of a swindler, a smiling- 
faced, lying-tongued scoundrel, who robbed him of all 
we possessed in the world. The man I was to have 
married was as surely my father’s murderer as if he 
had held the hand that sent the shot through my father’s 
brain that killed him. I am the last of the Lorings, 
I—the poor old man-maid recluse, on the edge of Yan¬ 
kee Valley in the Canadian Northwest. 

This bit of Alberta land is all that is left of the 

82 


CATTLE 


83 


once vast Loring estate. That I still have this is due 
purely to the accident of a groom paying back a debt 
he owed my father. It was strange that I should have 
learned of its existence at a time when I believed that 
the end had come for me even as it had come for my 
father. True, I was not to go out of life by the act 
of my own hand and will. A quite eminent scientist 
had pronounced my death sentence. He gave me a 
few months in which to live. It was a ghastly situation 
for one who had been through what I had and who de¬ 
sired to live for the noble purpose of revenge. That 
sounds melodramatic and I suppose if I were pious I 
would bear in mind that revenge is sweet only for God. 
But my nature is not sweet and hell raged within me 
at that time. It was strange, as I have said, at that 
time suddenly to learn of the existence of this ranch. 
I seemed to see it as in a dream—it lay far off under 
a spotlight of Alberta sunlight and it called to me with 
a clarion call. 

I came out here. I am hard and strong. I don’t 
intend to die. I’ve something to live for. Not a man. 
I hate men, as I have said above. I have deep-rooted, 
never-dying aversion for the whole mean race of men. 
That which I have to live for is this quarter section 


84 


CATTLE 


of Alberta land. It’s mint. I love it better than any¬ 
thing else on earth. 

I broke my own land. I’ve put in my own crop. I 
hayed and chored, fenced and drudged, both in house 
and upon the land. I made most of my own furniture 
and I practically rebuilt the inside of this old shack. 

“Necessity is the mother of invention” goes the 
proverb, but I loathe proverbs. One can find an oppos¬ 
ing one for even the best of them. Some people pin 
proverbs and poems and texts upon their souls as on 
their walls. I suppose they get the sort of comfort 
and help from it that a cripple gets from a crutch. 
As far as that goes we are all cripples in life, and few 
there be who can walk without a crutch. I never saw 
a human being yet who did not limp, at least men¬ 
tally. . . . 

There’s one man in Alberta who comes to see me 
regularly once a month and no snub or plain telling 
that I prefer my own company to that of any others 
makes any impression upon him. He is painfully, hope¬ 
lessly Scotch. However, one cannot quarrel with a man 
who has saved one’s life. I am, or was, what they call 
in the west a “lunger.” I was definitely diagnosed as 
“T.B.” But if any one doubts that my lungs are sound 


CATTLE 


85 


now they should hear me let out a war whoop that 
would compare well with old Chief Pie Belly’s. Pie 
Belly is a Stony Indian and I have learned some things 
of that Indian. Not that I make a daily practice of 
war whooping, but there’s sport in letting the full vol¬ 
ume and force of one’s lungs pour out across the utter 
silence of the prairie. If my voice carries to my neigh¬ 
bors—the nearest is five miles off—no doubt they take 
me for a coyote. 

That Scotch doctor likes to pick a quarrel, to argue, 
to find fault and to bark like a dog. Alberta, accord¬ 
ing to him, is a “mon’s land.” There is no sentimental 
reference to “God’s country” or “Sunny Alberta” from 
him. It is a hard land—a mon’s land. I’ve no right 
here. I should not work outside the house. I should 
engage a couple to work the place on shares. I should 
dress as a “lass”; I should permit my hair to grow “as 
God planted it”; I should chasten my bitter tongue and 
heart; I should cultivate my neighbors, and I should not 
set myself up against my fellow men. Hm! Sounds 
very fine, my Scotch friend, but what do you know of 
what I have been through? How can you know that 
I am frozen inside? 

My ranch—and I would rather write of my ranch 


86 


CATTLE 


than dig into my personal thoughts and emotions—if 
there are any left in me—my ranch lies midway be¬ 
tween the good grain lands on one side and the hill 
country, the cattle lands, on the other. I suppose I am 
part of Yankee Valley. I am sorry for that because 
I do not like Americans. They are noisy, insincere, 
and a boasting, bragging lot. As far as that goes, 
I like the English less. The Scotch are hard to toler¬ 
ate, and as for the Irish, the devil made them in his 
own likeness. If it comes down to that, I don’t know 
a single nationality that I can respect, and I have 
lived all over the world. 

To farm is to gamble on the largest scale possible, 
for the earth may be said to be our board, the seed our 
dice and the elements, the soil, the parasites, the hail, 
the frost and the drought, 'these are the cards stacked 
against us. But, like all gamblers, we are reaching 
out for a prize that enthralls and lures us, and that “pot 
of gold at the end of our rainbow” is the harvest— 
the wonderful, glorious golden harvest of Alberta. 
Some day, it will come to me also. 

In the spring, our land is excessively fragrant. The 
black, loamy soil fairly calls to one to lay the seed 
within its fertile bosom. Anything will grow in Al- 


CATTLE 


87 


berta. It’s a thrilling sight to see the grain prick 
up sturdy and strong. When first my own showed its 
green head above the earth, I suffered such exhilaration 
that I could have thrown myself upon the ground, and 
kissed the good earth. Those tiny points of green, 
there on the soil that I myself had plowed, disked, har¬ 
rowed and seeded. I suffered the exquisite pang of the 
creator. 

If only one might shut up memories in a box, close 
the lid tight and turn the key upon them. If but the 
past could be blotted out, as are our sins by death, 
then, methinks, we would find comfort and compensa¬ 
tion in this poor life once again. 

The last generation of the Lorings were a soft- 
handed, dependent race. I come of an older, primitive 
breed, I am a reversion to type, for I love to labor 
with my hands. Had I been a man, I might have been 
a ditch or a grave digger. I love the earth. When I 
die, I do not want to be cremated. I want to go back 
to the soil. 

I talk here of compensations and of my ranch which 
I say is what I have to live for, yet life has not been 
sweet or easy for me in Alberta. It’s been a battle with 
a grim antagonist—for poverty and sickness and cold 


88 


CATTLE 


—what can be grimmer than these? And then, much 
as I love to put in my crop, I have not yet had the joy 
of reaping it, for cutworm took my first, and this year 
early frost destroyed my grain when it had attained 
almost full growth. But never mind—that is all part 
of the game. The hardest part has been the enforced 
work at the Bar Q. No one enjoys laboring for those 
beneath them. I don’t mean the laboring men. I have 
no sense of caste whatsoever, and they are as good as 
I am, I suppose. But Bull Langdon, the man whose 
pay I must take. He is a wild beast, one of the two 
legged cattle that should go to the shambles with his 
stock. 

Yet I am not afraid of Bull Langdon. He never 
shouts at me. He only blusters, and his bloodshot eyes 
fall before mine. He may be the great boss and bully 
of the Bar Q. With his big bull whip in hand, his 
cattle may cower before him, and his men quail and 
slink away; his wife and Jake may tremble at the 
sound of his voice or step. I have his “number.” I 
know that he is a coward, a great sneaking bully. He 
can lord it over small men and women and half-witted 
Indian boys. He never employs stronger or bigger 
men than himself. A giant in stature, and a Samson 


CATTLE 


89 


in strength, nevertheless I assert he is a coward, a big 
unwhipped bully, whose own strength will some day 
prove his boomerang. 

It’s queer, as I have run along, I have omitted all 
mention of one in Alberta whom I should call a friend. 
Just a poor, illiterate young girl. I never can forget 
Nettie Day as I first saw her. Sickness, delirium even, 
may cast a glamour over things. It may be then our 
imagination pictures things as they are not; but never¬ 
theless, Nettie’s face, bending above my own, with its 
gentle look of tenderness and compassion, seemed to me 
as sweet as the “blessed damozel’s” as she looked down 
from heaven to the earth beneath. She had wide, deep 
blue eyes, a child’s eyes, full of an unplumbed inno¬ 
cence and questioning. Strange how one can come 
into our lives for such a little spell, disappear beyond 
our sight, and still remain in our hearts. I have seen 
little enough of Nettie, and the last time I saw her 
I hate to recall that I scolded her. 

Next to my place is a quarter section of homestead 
land, owned by a young man named Stanley. One day 
I was fencing, when this young fellow, who had made 
attempts upon several occasions to speak to me, came 
over and watched me at my work. I ignored him, but 


90 


CATTLE 


like my doctor friend, above mentioned, he is Scotch 
and thick. He didn’t even know he was being ignored, 
and presently in a disgustingly friendly way he had 
the colossal nerve to attempt to instruct me in the art 
of making post holes. At that juncture I turned 
around and looked at him. Now I may seem as that 
Bar Q hand said, like a “tough old nut.” No doubt 
I look like one, but I know the English trick of freez¬ 
ing ordinary people by a mere look. It is a trick, 
like the Englishman’s monocle and the strange part is 
only an English person can do it. You just stare, 
stonily, at the insignificant atom before you. I begin 
at the feet, and travel contemptuously up the whole 
despised body, till I reach the abashed and propitiating 
face. One need not say a single word. That look— 
if you know the technique of the act—is enough. This 
young Stanley dropped his hammer in a hurry and 
turned very red. 

“I say, you’re not mad at me, are you?” he stam¬ 
mered. 

And just then Nettie, whom the doctor had dropped 
at my house that day, came from out the house, and 
something about that boy’s face, just a flicker of the 
eye and the deepening red about his ears apprised me 


CATTLE 


91 


of the reason why he was so keen on being friends with 
me. I turned just in time to see on Nettie’s guilty face 
the identical flicker I had noted on Stanley’s. As cross 
as two sticks, I grabbed that girl by the arm and 
shoved her along the field to the house. 

Once inside, I made her sit down, while I told her in 
detail all of the miseries and pitfalls and deceits and 
heartbreaks, the general unhappiness that befalls one 
foolish enough to fall in love. Love I told her was an 
antiquated emotion which had been burned out by the 
force of its own mad fire. I said something like that, 
for I was talking with feeling, upon a topic I under¬ 
stood, and as I talked, becoming more and more moved 
and excited as my subject warmed me, suddenly I ob¬ 
served that Nettie’s eyes were fixed on space, as if on 
something very far away. She had her large, white 
hands unconsciously clasped upon her bosom; she was 
kneeling beside me, and something about her pose struck 
me at that moment as so divinely beautiful, so ex¬ 
quisitely madonna-like and lovely, that I choked upon 
my words and could go no further. 

Then Nettie came out of her dream—I am sure she 
had heard not a word of my discourse—and said: 

“Thank you, Angel.” That girl calls me—Angel. 


92 


CATTLE 


God alone knows why. There is little of the angel 
in me. 

I have not seen her since that day. Life has played 
strange tricks upon my little friend since then. Her 
father dead, her brothers and sisters scattered about 
in institutions and on farms, Nettie herself—at the 
Bar Q—of all places in the world, the last I would have 
wished to have seen her go! 

Sometimes in the evening, when my work is done, I 
can recall to my mind Nettie as I last saw her with 
almost photographic clearness, and I experience a sense 
of nearness to her. The other night I had an impulse 
to start out then and there for the Bar Q. I felt that 
she needed me. 

That young man on the adjoining quarter section 
sings a great deal as he works. I can hear him clear 
across the field—he has a real voice, a full, fine bari¬ 
tone, and in the still evenings, I confess there is some¬ 
thing uplifting about that fresh young voice as it rings 
across the prairie. His home is nearing completion, 
he says, and that is why he sings. The thought of 
home and Nettie warms his heart till it bursts into 
song. Ah—well, who am I to judge what is best for 
these young people ? So, sing on, young Cyril. I hope 


CATTLE 


93 


that that clear brave voice of yours, as full of melody 
as a lark’s, will never falter. 

Last night, when I came in from the field, the half- 
breed Jake sidled along from behind my house. It gave 
me a start to see the poor idiot with his wild, witless 
face. He wanted to tell me something about the Bar 
Q. He jabbered and gibbered, and I could hardly make 
head or tail of what he was saying, save that Bull 
Langdon was eating something up. 


CHAPTER X 


B RIGHT sunlight flooded Alberta. The miracu¬ 
lous harvest was over, and the buzz of the thou¬ 
sand threshing machines, day and night, sounded like 
music in the ears of the ranchers. The greatest bumper 
crop in the history of the continent had made Alberta 
famous throughout the grain world. 

Settlers were pouring in from across the line. Land 
values soared to preposterous heights; and wherever 
there were municipalities of open range and unbroken 
land, the territory was being staked and fenced. 

On the heels of the famous crop came first the fatal 
oil and then the fatal city real estate boom, which 
later was to act as a boomerang to the land, since it 
brought in the wildcat speculator, the get-rich-quick 
folk, the gold-brick seller and the train of clever 
swindlers that spring up from nowhere when a boom 
is on. The great province was to be exploited by these 
parasites. The boom swelled to fabulous proportions 


CATTLE 


95 


almost overnight. The streets of Calgary were 
thronged, train loads poured into the country; hys¬ 
terical, half-crazed gamblers and “suckers” made or 
lost fortunes overnight; businesses of all kinds were 
started on “a shoe-string”; the wildest stories of oil 
flowing like water raced about the land. Oil indeed 
there was, as also coal in unlimited quantities, for the 
mineral wealth of the province had barely been 
scratched, but the boom was in full swing before the 
tests had been properly made, with the result that con¬ 
servative people began to regard it askance, and almost 
as quickly as it had started, like an inflated bubble the 
oil boom burst. This brought undeserved desertion 
and wholesale ruin upon the country. Alberta had 
been made the “goat” of a flock of get-rich-folk from 
across the line, intent on making fortunes which then 
existed only upon paper. 

The one solid and substantial asset that all the de¬ 
flated booms could not affect, was the agricultural 
wealth of the province, real and potential. During this 
period, Bull Langdon’s power and wealth swelled to 
enormous proportions. Before the year was out, he 
had become a multimillionaire. His cattle ranged over 
those “thousand hills”; his hundreds of granaries were 


96 


CATTLE 


overflowing with the grain of that bumper crop, grain 
that he held to sell as soon as the market was right; 
his grip was upon the stockyards and packing house 
industry and the stock market was under his control. 
No one questioned his right to be called the Cattle King 
of Canada. 

Bloated with affluence and power, illiterate and un¬ 
couth as ever, his vanity was boundless. It flattered 
him to be known as the richest and most powerful man 
in the Province; to have his cattle, his stock, his im¬ 
mense ranches pointed out; to see his brand far-flung 
over the cattle country, and encroaching into the west¬ 
ern States; his name stamped upon the beef that topped 
the market, not merely in the east but in the west, 
even into the Chicago stockyards—there to Jbe ex¬ 
hibited, and wondered at—grass fed steers, competing 
with and surpassing the cornfeds of the U.S.A. 

Above all his possessions he placed his magnificent 
purebred Hereford bulls, a race whose stamp was upon 
the whole cattle country, for scarcely a farmer or 
rancher in the country, but aspired to have his herd 
headed by a Bar Q bull. He had spared neither expense 
nor labor upon the breeding of these perfect animals, 
whose sires had come from the most famous herds in 


CATTLE 


97 


England and the States, and whose mothers were pure 
Canadian slock. 

He coveted now the world championship for his 
latest product, a two-year-old Hereford bull, Prince 
Perfection Bar Q the Fourth. The Prince, as he was 
known throughout the purebred world, was of royal 
ancestry, and already, as a mere calf, his career at the 
cattle fairs in Canada had brought him under the eyes 
of the experts and cattle specialists. He was the son 
of that Princess Perfection Bar Q the Third, who had 
brought the lordly price when exhibited by Bull Lang- 
don in Chicago of $40,000. His sire was of foreign 
birth, shipped to Canada by a member of the royal fam¬ 
ily, who, infatuated with the “cattle game,” had ac¬ 
quired a ranch in Canada, and declared it to be the 
sport of kings. 

Annually there was a showing of the Bar Q bulls, and 
from far and near ranchers and farmers trekked from 
all over Canada and the States to see the latest prod¬ 
ucts of the famous herd. This year was exceptional, 
inasmuch, as the two-year-old Prince was to be exam¬ 
ined and shown before a jury of experts, who would 
pronounce upon his chances of winning the coveted 
championship in the United States. 


98 


CATTLE 


His curly hide brushed and smoothed, oiled and 
trimmed; his hoofs all but manicured; his face washed 
with soft oiled cloths; his eyes and nostrils wiped with 
boracic acid solution; fed on the choicest of green feed 
and chop, a golden ring in his nose, through which a 
golden chain was passed, the petted brute was led out 
to gladden the eyes of stock enthusiasts, experts, agri¬ 
culturists, scientific cattle students, and others con¬ 
nected with the purebred game, who had come literally 
from the four corners of the earth, with a passion 
similar to that of the scientist or the collector, discov¬ 
ering some coveted rare specimen. They crowded 
about this perfect product of the Hereford race, and 
looked the massive brute over with the eyes of con¬ 
noisseurs. 

In that crowd of men about the roped-in space, 
around which Cyril Stanley led the bull by the chain, 
university men, men of title, an English Prince and an 
ex-president of the U.S.A., millionaire cattlemen and 
sportsmen, the overall cattlemen, ranchers, farmers, 
stock enthusiasts, stockyard and packing-house men, 
to say nothing of the humble homesteaders and dere¬ 
licts, the numerous “remittancemen” from the old coun¬ 
try, and speculators from cattle centers in Canada and 


CATTLE 


99 


the States. A mixed “bunch,” socially as wide apart 
as the poles, but in that cattle shed as close as broth¬ 
ers. They rubbed elbows, swapped expensive cigars 
for grimy chews, held their sides at each other’s jokes, 
and joshed and roared across to each other. They 
were kindred spirits, and cattle was the bond between 
them. 

Glowering and grinning at each other, as at a prize 
fight, applauding, groaning out oaths of enthusiasm, 
strange explosive utterances, they were a motley com¬ 
pany. Professor Morton Calhoun made a circle of 
his hands, and squinted through it with one screwed-up 
eye, the attitude of an artist before a masterpiece, and 
after a long scrutiny, shook his head and groaned with 

joy- 

Through this group of men moved Bull Langdon, in 
high good humor, dominant and arrogant, intimate 
with everyone, yet close to no one. When the big 
shed was full, and the circle about the ropes entirely 
surrounded his exhibit, Bull Langdon nonchalantly 
stepped into the ring, where the Prince followed Cyril 
Stanley tamely about. Cyril had a curiously hypnotic 
influence over the animal, and could even make him 
submit to having his head caressed and his nose patted. 


100 


CATTLE 


On either horn two bright ribbons had been coyly 
twisted and tied, and these gave the animal a peculiarly 
festive look. As Bull Langdon stepped into the ring, 
a murmur of admiring and respectful applause broke 
forth. He approached the Prince from the left side, 
and reaching out a careless hand pulled the ribbon 
from one of the horns. 

“We ain’t raisin’ no dolls!” said the cowman. “This 
is a Bull!” and he reached for the other horn. 

“Careful, boss!” warned Cyril. “He’s not used to 
all this excitement, and I got my hands full keeping 
him calm.” 

“Who’s talking?” growled the cattleman, spitting 
with amusement. “Are you trying to teach Bull Lang¬ 
don the cattle game, you young whelp? I knowed it 
before the day you was born.” 

The young bull’s head had suddenly uplifted. He 
sniffed the air, his neck bristling. Slowly, growing 
in depth and power, there burst from his throat a 
mighty roar that shook the tent, and drove the color 
from the faces about that ring, as with an almost con¬ 
certed movement there was a backing from the lines 
and an exodus from the tent. Bull Langdon, as swiftly 
as a cat, had backed to the lines and was over them. 


CATTLE 


101 


Cyril was alone in the inclosure with the roaring bull. 
Half talking, half singing, not for a moment did his 
hand relax its grip upon the chain. Slowly the ani¬ 
mal’s head turned in his direction and again dropped 
submissively. There was a breath of relief about the 
lines, and Cyril led the bull back to his stall, fastening 
him securely to his post by the ring in his nose. 

Bull Langdon was swearing foully, but his fury 
against Cyril and the Prince subsided at the approach 
of Professor Calhoun, the greatest authority on pure¬ 
bred cattle in the world. 

“Sir,” said the little man, glaring at Bull Langdon 
through double-lensed glasses, scrutinizing the cattle¬ 
man with the scientific air with which he examined 
cattle, “I will not hesitate to predict that your ani¬ 
mal’s progress throughout the United States—I will 
go farther and say, throughout the world—will be one 
of unbroken triumph. It has been my pleasure to look 
upon the most perfect Hereford specimen in the world. 
I congratulate you, sir.” 

Bull Langdon grunted, rose on the balls of his feet, 
chewed on the plug in his cheek, spat, and, his chest 
swelling, roared across at one of the Bar Q “hands.” 

“Take the gentleman—take all of the gentlemen—” 


i 


102 


CATTLE 


he added, with a sweeping gesture of his arm toward 
the crowd, “to the booze tent. The treat’s on Bull 
Langdon. Fill up, gentlemen, on the Bar Q.” 

Meanwhile, satiated with gloating over his great 
treasure, he bethought of another possession and upon 
which at this stage he set if possible an even greater 
value. True, he reckoned Nettie as “scrub” stock, 
while the Prince was of lordly lineage. On the auction 
block, the prince might bring a price that was worth 
a king’s ransom; yet as he thought of the big, white¬ 
skinned, blue-eyed girl, the cowman knew that he would 
not give her up for all the champions in the cattle 
world. He owned the Prince; but though he had held 
the girl in his arms, he knew in his heart of hearts that 
she had never been his. That was what fretted and 
tormented him—the thought that his brand upon Nettie 
could never be permanent. 

It was a boast of the cowman that what he wanted 
he took, and what he took, he held. He had wanted 
Nettie Day. He had taken her by mad force, as a bar¬ 
barian might have fallen upon a Christian slave, yet 
he knew, with a sense of smoldering hatred and fury 
that a single hair upon the head of the young Bar Q 
hand was more to her than the Bull and all his pos- 


CATTLE 


103 


sessions. He was torn with a desire to return to Bar Q, 
and again take forcible possession of the girl; but the 
prize herd was now almost ready for the tour. It would 
be disastrous, ruinous to his reputation and career, if, 
at this psychological moment, anything should inter¬ 
fere with the departure of the herd, and there was no 
man in the outfit who could be trusted to take the place 
of Bull Langdon himself. Well, it would be the matter 
of a month or two only, and he would be back. 

He found himself at the Prince’s stall, glowering 
down upon the back of the kneeling Cyril, who was 
brushing down his charge’s legs with an oiled brush. 
Presently Cyril looked up, and seeing his employer, he 
arose. The Bull cleared his throat noisily. 

“Well, how about it, bo? You goin’ along with 
Prince to the States ?” 

Cyril waited in his slow way, before replying, and 
as he hesitated, the Bull threw in savagely: 

“Bonus of $500 to the ‘hand’ that takes special 
charge of the Prince and another $10 raise to his 
wages.” 

$500! It was a mighty sum of money, and the young 
man felt his heart thump at the thought of what it 
would buy for Nettie. 


104 


CATTLE 


“When would you want me to leave?” 

“Two weeks.” 

“When’d we be back?” 

“Two months. I’ll go along as far as St. Louis; 
leave for a spell, and join you at Chicago, cornin’ back 
with the outfit.” 

“I’d want a week off.” 

“What for?” 

“I got a bit of fencing to finish on my homestead, 
and I got to ride over to Bar Q.” 

“What you want at Bar Q?” 

Cyril’s straight glance met his. 

“My girl’s there.” 

“Who’d you mean?” 

“Nettie Day. We’re planning to get married this 
winter.” 

The savage in Bull Langdon was barely held in check. 
He could scarcely control the impulse to throttle the 
life out of this cool-eyed youth, who dared to claim 
for his own what was the Bull’s. 

“You’re countin’ your chickens before they’re 
hatched, ain’t you?” he snarled. “Mebbe the gell’s 
stuck on someone else.” 


CATTLE 


105 


“Not on your life she’s not,” said Cyril with calm 
conviction. “She and me are promised.” 

“Beat it, then,” roared the Bull, “and the sooner 
you’re back, the sooner we’ll start. I’ll hold the job 
for you for two weeks—not a day longer.” 

“You can count on me,” said Cyril. “I’ll be on the 
job.” 


CHAPTER XI 


E VERY day Nettie arose at six and went about 
her dull duties. There was the cream to sepa¬ 
rate, the pails and separator to clean and scald; 
there was the butter to make; the chickens to feed, 
washing, ironing and cleaning. The canning season 
was at hand and the Indians rode in with wild cran¬ 
berries, gooseberries, raspberries and saskatoons. 
From day to day she picked over and washed the fruit, 
packed it in syrup in jars, and set them in the wash 
boiler on the range. 

Time accustoms us even to suffering, and one of the 
penalties of youth and health is that one thrives and 
lives and pursues one’s way, even though the heart 
within one be dead. Vaguely Nettie groped for a solu¬ 
tion to her tragedy. She knew that it was not some¬ 
thing that could be pushed away into some recess of 
the mind; it was something unforgettable, a scar upon 
the soul rather than the body. Of Cyril she could think 

only with the most intense anguish of mind, and knew 
106 


CATTLE 


107 


that she could never face the man she loved and tell him 
what had befallen her. Already he had come to exist 
in her mind only as a loved one dead. He was no longer 
for her. She had lost Cyril through this act of Bull 
Langdon. 

Two weeks after the departure of the Bull for the 
purebred camp, Nettie was startled at her work by 
the insistent ringing of the telephone, which had been 
unusually silent since then. Her first thought was that 
the Bull was calling from Barstairs, and the thought 
of his hated voice, even upon the wire, held her back. 
The telephone repeated its ring, and with lagging feet 
Nettie at last answered it. 

"Hello!” 

“Is that the Bar Q?” 

It was a woman’s voice, quavering and friendly. 
Nettie’s hand tightened in a vise about the receiver. 
Her eyes closed. Pale as death, she leaned against the 

wall. 

“Is that Bar Q? Is that you, Nettie?” 

“Yes, ma’am.” 

“Is Mr. Langdon home?” 

“No, ma’am.” 

“Any of the men about?” 


108 


CATTLE 


“They’re all in the fields. 

“That’s too bad. I’m here at the station. Came 
down on the noon train. ’Twould take too long for 
you to harness up and meet me, so I’ll go over to the 
Reserve, and maybe Mr. Barrons will bring me up. 
Good-by, Nettie. Is everything all right?” 

A pause, and then Nettie answered faintly: 

“Yes, ma’am.” 

Nettie hung up the ’phone, and stood with her face 
pressed to the wall. A great tide of fear and shame 
swept over her. How w'as she to face her gentle mis¬ 
tress? How speak to her? How find words to tell 
her? She longed to escape from the kind and ques¬ 
tioning eyes that would look so trustingly and fondly 
into her own. 

It was but half an hour’s run by automobile from 
the station, and the grating noise of the car, valorously 
trying to make the high grade to the house, brought 
Nettie violently back to life. She dabbed at her eyes 
with her apron, smoothed her hair and tried to compose 
herself as best she could as the little car chugged to the 
back door. 

An appalling change had taken place in Mrs. Lang- 
don. Despite her feeble protest, the Indian agent, in 


CATTLE 


109 


whose car she had come, insisted upon lifting the frail 
little woman from the automobile, and carrying her 
into the house. She tried to laugh, as Nettie placed 
a chair for her, and when her breath would permit it, 
she said bravely: 

“Well, here I am, Nettie, back like a bad penny, 
and feeling just fine!” 

Fine! When there was scarcely anything left of her 
but skin and bones. Fine! When she was so weak she 
could scarcely stand without holding on to something. 
Nettie knelt in a passion of mothering pity beside her, 
and removed the little woman’s coat and hat. Mean¬ 
while, the faint tinkle of her mistress’s chiding laughter 
hurt Nettie more than if she had struck her. 

“Why, Nettie, one would think I was a baby the way 
you are fussing over me. I really feel very well. I’m 
in perfect health. We all are, dear, you know. Illness 
is just an error of the imagination, just as sin and 
everything that is ugly and cruel in the world is. We 
are all perfect, made in God’s image, and we can be 
what we will. Why, Nettie, dear, what on earth-!” 

Nettie’s head had fallen upon her mistress’s lap, great 
sobs rending her. 

“Nettie! Nettie! I’m real cross with you. This 



110 


CATTLE 


won’t do at all. Don’t you see that by giving way 
like this, we bring on our illnesses and troubles? We 
really are manufacturers of our own ills, and the solu¬ 
tions of all our problems are right within ourselves.” 

Nettie raised her head dumbly at that, and tried to 
choke back the overwhelming sobs. 

“Mrs. Langdon, I can’t never leave you now.” 

“Never leave me! Were you thinking of going, 
then?” 

“Oh, yes, Mrs. Langdon. I thought I’d have to go. 
There—were reasons why, and-” 

“Nettie, if the reasons are—Cyril, why, I know all 
about it. You can’t possibly marry anyway until he 
gets back. Bill wants him to go to the States with 
the bulls.” 

“Mrs. Langdon, I can’t never marry Cyril Stanley. 
I’d die first. Oh, Mrs. Langdon, I wisht I was dead. 
I wisht I had the nerve to drown myself in the Ghost 
River.” 

“Nettie Day, that is downright wicked. Whatever’s 
come over you? Have you fallen out with Cyril? 
You’ve been brooding here alone. Now I’m back, 
things will right themselves. I want you to be the 
cheerful girl I’m so fond of—so very fond of, Nettie.” 



CATTLE 


111 


Very slowly, but bravely waving back the help Nettie 
proffered with outstretched hand, Mrs. Langdon moved 
to the stairs, smiling and reiterating softly her health 
formula: 

“I am strong; in perfect health; in God’s image; His 
creation. All’s well with me and God’s good world.” 

Nettie watched her as slowly she climbed the stairs. 
There was the sound of a closing door, and then a 
hollow, wrenching, barking cough. Words of the Bull 
flashed like lightning across Nettie’s mind: 

“My old woman ain’t strong. She’ll croak soon. 
There’ll be another Mrs. Langdon at Bar Q. You-” 

Nettie’s hand went to her strangling throat. Her 
voice rang out through the room in wild despair: 

“Oh, my God!” prayed Nettie Day. “Don’t let Mrs. 
Langdon die. Don’t let her die. Please, please, please, 
oh, God! let her live!” 



CHAPTER XII 


T HE long, golden fall of Alberta was especially 
beautiful that year, and although well into No¬ 
vember, the weather was as warm and sunny as the 
month of May. Winter came late to Alberta, some¬ 
times withholding its frosty hand till considerably 
after Christmas; but it stayed late, extending even into 
the spring months. There was a popular saying that 
there was no spring in Alberta; one stepped directly 
out of winter into summer. But the Alberta fall was 
incomparably beautiful. The days were laden with 
sunlight, and the night skies, with their myriad stars, 
set in a firmament more beautiful than anywhere else 
on earth, were remarkable for their lunar rainbows, 
and the white blaze of the Northern lights. 

Yet the long, sunlit days, and the cool, starry nights 
brought no balm to the distracted Nettie. She felt 
undone—body and soul. 

As she trailed listlessly across the barnyard, she no 

longer chirruped happily to the wee chicks or reproved 

the contentious mother hens. All joy in work and in 
112 


CATTLE 


113 


contact with the live things on the ranch was gone for 
her. She lived on like a machine, automatically wound 
up. There were certain daily duties to be done; she 
went about them dully and mechanically. 

One November evening as she came, basket in hand, 
out of the cowbarn, where she had been looking for 
eggs in the stalls where the hens loved to lay, Jake 
raced through the yard on his broncho, shouting and 
screaming with excitement. 

“Him! Him!” wildly yelled Jake, pointing toward 
where along the Banff highway a solitary horseman 
could be seen. At the word “Him” Nettie’s first 
thought was of the Bull, and she stiffened and paled; 
but as she looked down the slope, to where the rider 
was passing through the main gate to the road, she 
turned even whiter, and longing and fear together shook 
her so violently that she could hardly keep from swoon¬ 
ing at the sight of the well-remembered wide hat, the 
bright flowing scarf, loosely tied beneath the boyish 
chin, the orange-colored chapps, and the peppery young 
broncho bearing his rider now so swiftly up that slope. 
She did not recover from her emotion in time to take 
flight, as her terrified impulse urged her, for Jake had 
already opened the gate of the corral, and Cyril passed 


114 


CATTLE 


through. He had seen the girl at the barn door, and 
leaping from his horse, was at her side in an instant. 

The basket of eggs in her hand crashed to the ground. 
She lifted up both her hands, and her eyes looked wildly 
about her like a trapped thing, seeking some way of 
escape, as steadily, with face aglow, he closed in upon 
her. With a muffled cry, she beat him back from her, 
crying loudly: 

“No-o! No! No!" 

Like one possessed, she pushed him from her with 
mad strength and rushed through the corral out into 
the yard. Dumfounded, Cyril looked after her, and 
then calling her by name he pursued her. 

“Nettie! Nettie! I say—Nettie!” 

She fled as if demented, running in a circle around 
the house; then darted in at the back kitchen door. 
She tried to hold the door closed, but his impetuous 
hand forced it open. Her breath coming in spasmodic 
gasps, leaning against the wall of the back kitchen 
for support, Nettie faced him. 

She cried out loudty: 

“Go away! Go away!” 

“Go away? What do you mean? What for? 
Nettie, for God’s sake, what’s the matter, little girl?” 


CATTLE 


115 


She repeated the words wildly, with all her force. 

“Go away! Go! Don’t come near me. Don’t 
touch me. Don’t even look at me.” 

“Why not? What’s the matter? You’re playin’ a 
game, and it ain’t fair to go so far. What’s the 
matter, girl? Nettie—you—you ain’t gone back on 
me, are you?” 

She could not meet those imploring young eyes, and 
turned bodily about, so that now her face was to the 
wall, and her back to him. Her voice sounded muffled, 
strangled: 

“Leave me be. I mustn’t see you.” 

“Why not? Since when? What’ve I done? I got 
a right to know. What’s happened?” 

His voice quavered though he sought manfully to 
control it. There was a long, tense silence, and then 
Nettie Day said in a low, dead voice: 

“I ain’t the same.” 

“You mean you’ve changed?” he demanded, and she 
answered in that same lost voice: 

“Yes—all changed. I ain’t the same.” 

He took this in slowly, his hands clenching, the hot 
tears scalding his lids. Then burst put with boyish 
anguish and passion: 


116 


CATTLE 


“Don’t say that, Nettie. I can’t believe it. It ain’t 
true. You and me—we’re promised. I been thinking 
of nothing else. I built the little house for you. It’s 
all ready now, dear, and I come on up to Bar Q now 
to tell you I got a chance to go to the States with the 
purebred stuff, and there’s a bonus of $500 in it for 
me, and a $10 raise to my wages. Nettie, girl, I took 
him up on that proposition, because I wanted to do 
more for you.” 

“Why did you go away?” said Nettie harshly. 

“I went on your account. You ain’t mad about 
that, are you, girl? Why, I wanted to make things 
softer for you, and I got a chance now to make good 
money—$500, Nettie, and I says to myself: ‘Here’s 
where Nettie and me’ll go off on our honeymoon to the 
U.S.,’ and I come up here now thinking, ‘Here’s where 
we’ll put one over on the Bull, and we’ll slip down to 
Calgary and get married, and then we get aboard the 
train. I’ll spring my wife on the outfit and-’ ” 

He choked and gulped, and Nettie moaned aloud, 
crying: 

“I tell you I ain’t the same. I’m changed. You 
oughtn’t to’ve gone away.” 

Dark suspicions began to mount and with their 


CATTLE 


117 


growth jealous fury caused him to swing her roughly 
about, so that again she faced him. But she evaded his 
glance, turning her head from side to side, so that she 
need not meet his accusing hot young eyes. 

“You got another fellow, have you? Have you? 
You can answer that, anyway.” 

But there was no answer from the girl, and as his 
grip relaxed on her arms, her head dropped dumbly 
down. A cruel laugh broke from the boy’s lips. 

“I see! Someone’s cut me out, heh? I’m dead on 
to you now. I got your number, I have. If you’re 
that sort—if you couldn’t stand a few months’ sepa¬ 
ration without goin’ back on a fellow, I’m well rid of 
you. I wish you luck with your new fellow. I hope 
he ain’t the fool like I been.” 

Still there was no answer from the girl, standing there 
with her head down, and her arms hanging like a dead 
person’s by her sides. 

Presently there was a clatter of hoofs in the corral, 
and Cyril went out at a furious trot. As the flying 
horseman disappeared over the hills, Nettie slowly 
sank to her knees, and her arms stretched out, she 
cried aloud: 

“I wisht I was dead! I wisht I was dead!” 


CHAPTER XIII 


C YRIL reached the purebred camp the following 
morning. He had ridden without stopping the 
whole of the previous night. His mind was a burn¬ 
ing chaos; and he suffered all the torments of 
jealousy and uncertainty. Even while he told himself 
that he now hated Nettie, his heart went back to her— 
in aching tenderness about her. He pictured her as 
he had known her—her hair shining in the sun, and 
that look which love alone brings to the human eyes, 
lighting up her face and making it divinely beautiful 
to her lover. He recalled her at the little shack, where 
she had helped him fashion some of the rude pieces of 
furniture; riding across the prairie, their horses’ necks 
touching as they pressed as close to each other as the 
horses would permit; the nightly meetings in the berry 
bushes; her hand nestling in his own. He remembered 
her in his arms, her lips upon his! 

In the darkness of the night, the boy rode sobbing. 

In the gray of the morning, red of eyes, his hat well 
118 


CATTLE 


119 


over his face, he pulled into the Bull camp, and with 
as steady a gait and voice as he could command he 
faced Langdon. 

“You back already?” 

“Yes.” 

“Ready to go on?” 

“Yes.” 

“Good. We’ll get away a few days ahead. Hold 
on there!” 

Cyril had moved to go. He stood now at the door 
of the cattle shed. 

“Where’ve you been?” 

There was no answer, and the Bull persisted. 

“You been to Bar Q?” 

“Yes.” 

“Well?” 

There was silence again, and the Bull cut in with 
seeming indifference. 

“How’s your gell? When you gettin’ married?” 

A deep pause, and Cyril answered slowly. 

“It’s off. I ain’t marryinV’ 

“Turned you down, did she? Huh! Well, what do 
you care? There’s plenty good fish in the sea. There 
ain’t nothing to bellyache about. When you get over 


120 


CATTLE 


to the States, you’ll get all this female guff out of your 
bones. Women ain’t no good, anyways. They ain’t 
worth fretting about. They’re a bad lot. Gimme 
cattle in preference.” 

He extended the plug of tobacco, which the boy ig¬ 
nored. His reddened eyes looked levelly into the 
Bull’s, and he said sturdily: 

“It’s a lie what you said about women. They ain’t 
bad 1” 


CHAPTER XIV 


S HUT in all of that winter, throughout which 
spells of bitter cold had alternated with blind¬ 
ing blizzards, dissipated only by the tempering warmth 
of Chinook winds, Nettie and Mrs. Langdon were 
thrown upon their own resources, and drew closer 
together. 

As the winter deepened, something of the girl’s 
strange depression reacted upon the spirits of the sick 
woman, so that she, too, lapsed into long spells of si¬ 
lence. She would lie on the couch in the dining-living 
room close to the radiator, propped up high with the 
pillows Nettie piled around her, her book on Health 
and Happiness held loosely in her thin hands, as over 
and over again she conned its lessons, beautiful lessons 
in which surely no one who read, could fail to find that 
crumb of hope and comfort that means so much to the 
hungry heart. 

Occasionally her attention would stray from her be¬ 
loved book, and then she would lie there idly and ab- 
121 


122 


CATTLE 


sently watching the silent Nettie, as she moved about 
her duties. One day, watching her more intently than 
usual, and puzzling over the change in the formerly 
lighthearted and happy girl, something about her move¬ 
ments, a certain lassitude, brought Mrs. Langdon’s 
thoughts to an abrupt pause. At first she put the idea 
from her as fantastic and impossible; but moving round 
the better to scrutinize the girl, she knew she had made 
no mistake. The book slipped from her hand. Mrs. 
Langdon sat up on her couch, and stared with a 
startled gaze at Nettie Day. The fall of the book 
caused the girl to turn from her work, and as she 
stooped to pick it up, she met her mistress’s eyes. 

“Come here, Nettie. I want to speak to you.” 

Nettie advanced slowly, instinctively holding back, 
and in her unquiet heart there stirred a dread of the 
question she knew was trembling on her mistress’s lips. 
Mrs. Langdon’s eyes rose steadily, as she scanned the 
girl from head to foot. 

“Nettie, you are in trouble!” 

Nettie could not speak for the tightness in her throat 
and held her dry lips pressed together. 

“Oh, you poor child! You poor little girl! Why 
didn’t you tell me before? Now I understand!” 


CATTLE 


123 


Nettie moved around sideways, averting her gaze 
from those eyes so full of compassion and tenderness. 

“Mrs. Langdon,” she said in a low voice, “I done 
nothing wrong.” 

“Oh, Nettie! Don’t deny it, dear. I can see for 
myself. Sit beside me, dear. I am not condemning 
you. I only want your confidence. Tell me all about 
it, Nettie.” 

“I can't tell you, Mrs. Langdon! I can't. It’s 
something can never be told you.” 

Nettie was past that stage where tears w^ould have 
relieved her. All of her senses seemed numbed and 
hardened, but she clung persistently to the one pas¬ 
sionate purpose, to hide the truth, at all costs, from 
Mrs. Langdon. 

Of all who had known Bull Langdon, his wife alone, 
despite her cruel experiences with him over the years, 
did not hate him. To her, he was an erring child, who 
had started on the wrong trail, and went, misguided 
and blind, stumbling on in the darkness, never finding 
his way to that peaceful haven of thought that had 
been his wife’s comfort and refuge. Incapable of evil 
herself, she had the child’s simple faith in the goodness 
of others, or in their ultimate regeneration from wrong, 


124 


CATTLE 


or error, as she preferred to call it. She never wav¬ 
ered in her faith that sooner or later her “lost lamb” 
would return to the fold. 

It was probable that only her strange faith in the 
Bull had kept him from doing her physical harm. 
Harsh and gruff and neglectful, he had never been ac¬ 
tually cruel to her, and to himself he liked to boast defi¬ 
antly that he had “never raised his hand” to his wife. 

Now, as she begged for Nettie’s confidence, she never 
dreamed of connecting her husband with the girl’s 
trouble; that was a crime she never could have sus¬ 
pected. 

“Do you realize, Nettie, what is about to happen to 
you ?” 

“I expect you’ll want to turn me out now,” said 
Nettie dully, and then turning swiftly, she added with 
sudden force: “But don’t do it till the spring, Mrs. 
Langdon, because you ain’t strong enough to do the 
work this winter, and it’s nothing to me, and I want 
to stay and take care of you.” 

“Don’t you know me better than that? Turn your 
face around, Nettie. Do you think I’m the kind of 
woman to turn a girl out because she is going to be 
what I have all my life longed to be—a mother?” 


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125 


“Don’t! Oh, don’t, don’t!” cried the girl, loudly, 
rocking to and fro in tearless anguish. “I wisht I 
were dead. I wisht I’d had the nerve to drown myself 
in the Ghost River, but now it’s all froze over.” 

“It’s wicked to talk in that way. Why should you 
wish to drown yourself? I am not judging you. I 
only want to help you. Things are clear to me now. 
Cyril-” 

“Please don’t, Mrs. Langdon-” 

“Don’t what?” 

“Don’t speak his name even.” 

“Why not? Why should you carry this burden 
alone? If there’s any blame, it belongs to him, not 
you.” 

“No! No! He never done anything wrong. He’s 
not capable of doing wrong to a girl. Please don’t 
say anything about him. I can’t bear it!” 

“But we must face this thing fairly. You are in an 
abnormal condition of mind. It’s not an uncommon 
thing. Some women lose their minds at this time. I 
appreciate all that you have been suffering, and I pity 
you from the very bottom of my heart.” 

Nettie said nothing now, but she wrung her hands 
and clenched them together as if in physical pain. 




126 


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“Listen to me, Nettie dear. I want you to know 
that I know what it means to be as you are.” Her 
voice dropped to a wistful whisper. “Eight times, 
dear, just think of that. You know we pioneered in 
the early days. We didn’t always have a grand place 
like this, and—and—well, in those days the distances 
were so great. We were so far from everything—it 
was just as if we were on the end of the world, and we 
didn’t have the conveniences, or even vehicles to carry 
us places, and the doctors always came too late, or not 
at all. I lost all of my babies. They just came into 
the world to—to go out again; but I always thought 
that even the weakest of them had not lived in vain, 
because you see, they brought something lovely into 
my life. It was just as if—as if—an angel’s wing 
had touched me, don’t you see? It brought to me a 
knowledge of Love—love eternal and everlasting. No 
woman who bears a child can fail to feel it.” 

She broke off, in strange, breathless, smiling pause, 
as if she sought to conquer her present pain with the 
elusive joy that she believed had come with her dead 
children into her life. “So you see, Nettie, I don’t hold 
anything against any woman who bears a child, no 
matter how or where. It doesn’t matter what you or 


CATTLE 


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Cyril have done. I have great faith in that boy, and 
I feel he will make it right.” 

“Mrs. Langdon,” said Nettie in a suffocating voice, 
“I ask you not to believe that he is to blame for any¬ 
thing wrong about me.” 

“I won’t, then. I’ll believe the best of you both. 
We are going to be very happy, all of us. Just think, 
you are going to be a mother! It’s the sublimest feel¬ 
ing in life. I know it, because all my life I’ve heard 
baby voices in my ears and in my heart, Nettie, and my 
arms have ached and yearned to press a little baby to 
my breast. My own dear little ones have passed, but, 
Nettie, I’ll hold yours, won’t I, dear?” 

“Oh, Mrs. Langdon, when you talk like that, I feel 
just as if something was bursting all up inside me. I 
don’t know what to do.” 

“Do nothing, dear; but look out at God’s beautiful 
world. Lift your eyes to the skies, to the sun, to the 
hills’ hills!” 

“There’s no sun no more,” said Nettie. “The days 
are all dark and cold now, and the hills are all froze, 
too. They’re like me, Mrs. Langdon. I’m all froze 
up inside.” 

“Oh, but you’ll change now. Look, Nettie, it won’t 


128 


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be long before they’ll be back—my husband and your 
Cyril. I had a letter. Where is it, now? I put it 
in my book—no, under my pillow. See, what they 
write.” The paper fluttered in her hand, and she 
looked up to smile at Nettie. “It was thoughtful of 
Bill, wasn’t it, to have the letter typed? You know 
he hates to write letters. Poor fellow hasn’t much of 
an education— You know, Nettie, he came to the 
school when I was teaching, to learn. It was pathetic, 
really it was. But now, he’s had some stenographer 
write to tell me that they’ll be home in a couple of 
weeks. They should have been home two months ago, 
but they’ve had a terrible time of it in the States. You 
see there’s a kind of sickness over there—a plague 
that’s running around. It’s all over Europe and now 
the States. People, he writes, are afraid to go to 
public places, and everything is closed up. It’s a great 
disappointment for him, poor fellow. He expected so 
much from the Prince, and he’s hung on from week 
to week, and been through all sorts of aggravating 
times. You know they even quarantined his herd on 
a false suspicion of disease, when they were in perfect 
health. But, never mind, we have to have disappoint- 


CATTLE 


129 


ments in life. All I’m thankful for now is that he’s 
coming back—he and Cyril.” 

Nettie said in a low voice: 

“Mrs. Langdon, I don’t want to see neither of them 
again. I can’t.” 

“That’s the way you feel now. It’s natural in your 
condition. I had notions, too. Wanted the strangest 
things to eat, and had such fits of crying about nothing 
at all. You’ll be all over these moods by the time 
Cyril rides in. My! I’m going to scold that boy. 
Yes, yes, you may be angry if you want, but I’m going 
to give him a real piece of my mind, and then—well, 
it’s never too late to mend a wrong, Nettie.” 

“Mrs. Langdon,” said Nettie violently, “I tell you 
Cyril Stanley never done me no wrong.” 

“Well, that’s how you look at it, Nettie, and maybe 
you are right. I’m the last person to judge you.” 

Nettie bent down suddenly and grasping Mrs. Lang- 
don’s thin hand tightly, she kissed it. Then as quickly 
dropping it, she got up, threw her apron over her face 
and ran from the room. 


CHAPTER XV 


I N the winter the Bar Q outfit in the foothill ranch 
had dwindled down to eight men. These were all 
riders, men who “rode the fences” and kept them 
in repair; men who rode the range, and made the rounds 
of the fields, counted and kept account of the cattle 
remaining on the ranch, and reported sick or crippled 
cattle to the veterinary surgeon maintained at the 
ranch. 

The breeding stock had been despatched to the 
prairie ranch in the fall, where they were especially 
housed and cared for. The beef stock, three-year- 
old steers, were also disposed at the grain ranch, where 
they were, fed on chop and green feed and hay, to fatten 
them for the spring market. 

The purebred heifers and cows had their own home 
at Barstairs, where also was the camp of the purebred 
bulls. 

At the foothill ranch only the younger stuff was left, 

the yearling and rising two-year-old heifers and steers, 
130 


CATTLE 


131 


and these sturdy young stuff “rustled” over the winter 
range, finding sufficient sustenance to carry them 
through the winter. The cook car was closed, and 
the men “batched” in the bunkhouses but came to the 
main ranch house for bread, butter and general sup¬ 
plies. 

Nettie, long ignorant of her condition, had from day 
to day passed out the supplies to the men, unconscious 
of and indifferent to their scrutiny. She failed to 
realize that what had become apparent to her mis¬ 
tress, had also been revealed to the cunning eyes of the 
Bar Q “hands.” 

Bunkhouses in a ranching country are breeding 
places for the worst kind of gossip and scandal, to 
which disgusting commerce men even more than women 
are addicted. It was, therefore, not long before Net¬ 
tie’s name became first whispered and then carelessly 
bandied among them. At her name eyes rolled, winks 
and coarse laughter were the rule where but a little 
while ago she had been the object of admiring respect 
and aspiration. 

Cyril Stanley’s name was also on each man’s tongue, 
and they all took it for granted that he was responsible 
for Nettie’s condition. A change in their manner 


132 


CATTLE 


toward the girl followed the loose talk about her; there 
were certain meaning looks, a new familiarity of 
speech, and presently worse than that. “Pink-eyed” 
Tom, a man whose dirty boasts concerning women were 
a source of endless fun among the men, came to the 
house one day for a side of bacon. He followed Nettie 
into the big storeroom, where the Bar Q meat supply 
hung. As she passed the bacon to him, Pink-Eye man¬ 
aged to seize her hand, and with a broad grin, he 
squeezed it, and attempted to draw her to him. It 
was only a momentary grasp, but with the chuckle that 
went with it the girl understood and turned first deathly 
white and scarlet with anger. 

“Guess you ain’t used to man-handling—oh, no!” 
said Tom, and as she fiercely withdrew from his grasp, 
he laughed in her face, with an ugly meaning leer that 
set her heart frantically beating. 

She flew from the storeroom to the kitchen, and stood 
with her back pressed against the door, holding it 
closed. A sickening fear of the whole race of men 
consumed her. She longed to escape to some place be¬ 
yond their sight or ken where she might at least hide 
herself and be allowed the boon of suffering unmolested 
and unseen. She had a passionate longing to escape 


CATTLE 


133 


from the Bar Q—to leave forever the hateful place 
where she had been so cruelly betrayed, where she had 
suffered almost beyond endurance. But the thought 
of leaving Mrs. Langdon hurt her more than the 
thought of staying, and her mind wandered in the hope¬ 
less search of a solution to her appalling problem. She 
thought of her friend “Angel” Loring, with her cropped 
hair and men’s clothing, and for the first time com¬ 
prehended what might drive a woman to do as the Eng¬ 
lishwoman had done. 

“A bad report runs a thousand miles a minute,” says 
an oriental proverb. Certainly that is true of a ranch¬ 
ing country. From bunkhouse to farm and ranch 
house raced the tale of a girl’s fall; it was a morsel of 
exciting news to those dull souls shut in by the rigid 
hand of the winter 

On the first ChinooK day, women harnessed teams to 
democrats and single drivers to buggies, and took the 
road to Bar Q. Never had that ranch been favored 
with so man}?- visitors. Neither Nettie nor her mistress 
suspected that their guests had come to see for them¬ 
selves whether there was truth in the story concerning 
the girl which had percolated over the telephone and 
been carried by riders intent upon retailing the latest 


134 


CATTLE 


sensation of the foothills. Caste exists not in a ranch¬ 
ing country like Alberta, save among a few rare and 
exclusive souls, and a hired girl on a ranch has her own 
social standing in the community, especially if she is 
that rarity, a pretty girl. So Nettie’s plight was of 
as supreme an interest to the ranch and farm wives as 
if instead of a poor servant girl she had been any 
prosperous farmer’s daughter. Hired girls are poten¬ 
tial wives for the best of the ranchmen, and many a 
farmer’s wife has begun her career on a cook car. 

Nettie, cutting cake and brewing tea in the kitchen, 
paused, tray in hand, white-faced, behind the door, as 
the voices of the women close at hand floated through. 

“Looked me right in the face, innocent as a lamb, 
and she-” 

“She’s six months’ gone if a day.” 

“Seem’s if she might’ve gone straight, being the old¬ 
est in the family. You’d thought she’d want to set an 
example to her little brothers and sisters.” 

“Pshaw! she should worry.” 

“Ain’t girls awful today!” 

“When you told me on the ’phone, I couldn’t b’lieve 
it, and I come along on purpose to make sure for 
myself.” 



CATTLE 


135 


“Well, now you see, though I’m not used to havin’ 
my word doubted.” 

“Why, Mrs. Munson, I hadn’t the idea of questioning 
your word; but I thought as you hadn’t seen for your¬ 
self, and got it third-hand.” 

“I got it straight—straight from Batt Leeson, and 
he ought to know after workin’ more’n ten years at the 
Bar Q.” 

“Personally, I make a point of standing up for the 
girl.” 

The voice this time was a shade gentler, but it was 
also flurried and apologetic. 

“You know as well as I do, Mrs. Young, if a girl 
acts decent, men let her alone. You can tell me!” 

Her face stony, her head held high, Nettie pushed 
the door open with her foot, and came in with the tray. 
She silently served them, but her glance flickered toward 
her mistress, who was leaning forward listening to the 
whispered words of Mrs. Peterson, cringing toward the 
rich cattleman’s wife. For the first time since she had 
known her, Mrs. Langdon’s voice sounded sharp and 
cold. 

“I’ll thank you not to repeat a nasty tale like that. 


136 


CATTLE 


Nettie Day has just as much right to have a child as 
you have.” 

“Why, I’m a married woman,” blurted the outraged 
farm wife. 

“How do you know Nettie isn’t married?” 

Chairs were hunched forward. The circle leaned 
with pricked-up ears toward the speaker. 

“Is she, now?” 

“Well, that accounts for it!” 

“You couldn’t make me believe Nettie was that kind. 
We all thought—well, you know how girls carry on to¬ 
day. I’m sure you’ll excuse us. We’re all li’ble to 
make mistakes.” 

The Inquisition turned to Nettie. 

“My word, Nettie Day, why didn’t you let us know? 
What on earth did you want to keep it secret for? 
The whole country’d turned out to Chivaree for you. 
We haven’t had a marriage in a year, and Cyril Stan¬ 
ley is mighty popular with the boys.” 

Nettie’s gaze went slowly around that circle of faces. 
She wanted to make sure that all might hear her words. 

“I ain’t married to Cyril Stanley, and he done me 
no wrong. You got no right to talk his name loose like 
that.” 


CATTLE 


137 


An exclamatory silence reigned in the room. Mrs. 
Langdon, her cheeks very flushed, was sitting up, her 
bright eyes, like a bird’s, scanning the faces of her 
visitors. 

“Nettie,” her thin, piercing voice was raised, “you 
forgot my tea, and—and—maybe you ladies’ll excuse 
me today. I’m not well, you know.” 

For the first time since she had become a convert to 
her strange philosophy she was admitting illness; but 
she was doing it in another’s behalf. 

As the last of the women disappeared through the 
door, and before the murmur of their voices outside 
had died out, Mrs. Langdon made a motion of her 
hands toward Nettie, and the girl ran over, dropped 
on her knees by the couch and hid her face in her mis¬ 
tress’s lap. 

“Nettie, don’t you mind what they say. Women 
are terribly cruel to each other. I don’t know why 
they should be, I’m sure, for I believe that we all have 
in us the same capacities for sinning, only most of us 
escape temptation. It’s almost a gamble, isn’t it, 
Nettie; and I’m so sorry, poor child, that you should 
have been the one to lose.” Her voice dropped to a 


138 


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whisper. “I’ll confess something to you now, Nettie. 
I —yes, I—almost-” 

“If you’re goin’ to say something against yourself,” 
said Nettie hoarsely, “I don’t want to hear it. You 
ain’t capable ever of doing anything wrong.” 

On the road, the carriages were grouped together. 
Their occupants leaned out and called back and forth 
to each other. 

“What do you know of that?” 

“I’m certainly surprised at Mrs. Langdon. I didn’t 
think she’d hold to anything like that.” 

“I did, and I’m not a bit surprised. I could’ve told 
you a thing or two. Birds of a feather flock together, 
and she-” 

Voices were lowered, as another woman’s reputation 
was pulled to shreds. 

“Well, Mrs. Munson, you don’t say so.” 

“I certainly do.” 

“I remember when the Bull first married her. Sa-ay, 
there was all kinds of talk. Ask anyone who was here 
in them times.” 

Murmurs and exclamations, and a woman’s voice 
rumbling out a tale that should never have been told. 




CATTLE 


139 


“Would you’ve believed it! And she so sweet and 
sly of tongue.” 

“Still waters run deep. You can’t trust them quiet 
kind. I had it direct from Jem Bowers. You know 
Jem. He was right along when it happened. They 
were shut in that schoolhouse for two whole days, and 
the door locked and bolted. The Bull himself asked 
Jem to go for the missionary, and everyone knows Jem 
was one of the witnesses at the Langdon wedding. Said 
she looked just like a little scared bird, and her eyes 
were all screwed up with crying, so I guess doin’ wrong 
did bring her no happiness.” 

“Well, I’d never have believed it if you hadn’t told 
me. I’m going to hustle right off now. I want to stop 
and see Mrs. Durkin on my way. She couldn’t get off 
to come, as they’ve had the mumps up to their house, 
and I promised to let her know, and I’ll bet her tongue’s 
hangin’ out waitin’.” 

“Well, don’t say I said it.” 

“I won’t. I’ll say I got it from—from—I’ll not 
name the party. Get ap, Gate! My, that mare’s 
smart.” 

“I like geldings for driving. They aren’t so quick, 


140 


CATTLE 


but they’re dependable and strong. Good-by. Will 
you be at the box social?” 

“Sure, what’s it for?” 

“Oh, them sick folks in the east. Did you hear that 
that plague sickness they got in the States has sneaked 
across to Canada, and everybody’s scared nearly to 
death. They’ve got it awful out in Toronto and Mon¬ 
treal.” 

“Didn’t know it was as bad as that.” 

“It’s something awful out east I heard. My husband 
brought home a paper from Calgary, and they had the 
whole front page in headlines about it. Them Yankees 
brought it in with them when they run away to escape 
from it in their own country. Wish they’d stay home 
and look after their own sicknesses, ’stead of coming 
across the line and carrying it along with them. Others 
have been flying out west here, and they say if we don’t 
look out, first thing we know Calgary’ll have it, and then 
—well, it’ll be our turn. I heard they were shipping 
all the sick ones out of the city to the country.” 

The women looked at each other waveringly, licking 
their lips and turning white with dread. They drew 
their rugs closer about them and said they had to be 
off, as it was getting dark and they didn’t want to catch 


CATTLE 


141 


cold, and no one ever knew when a change might blow 
up in the weather and that cloud off to the north looked 
mighty threatening. In the sudden panic of the ap¬ 
proaching plague, Nettie was for the time being for¬ 
gotten. The clatter and rattle of their wheels was heard 
along the road, as with whip and tongue they urged 
their horses homeward. 


CHAPTER XVI 


A LL night long the wind blew wildly. It raved like 
i % a live, mad thing, tearing across the country 
with tornado-like force. 

The house shook and rocked upon its foundations, 
the rattling windows and clattering doors ready to be 
burst open every moment. 

To the girl, lying wide-eyed throughout the night, 
it seemed almost as if the voice of the wild wind had 
the triumphant, mocking tone of the man she loathed. 
It seemed to typify his immense strength, his power 
and madness. It was gloating, triumphing over her, 
buffeting and trampling her down. 

Nettie was not given to self-analysis, but for all her 

simplicity she was capable of intense feeling. Behind 

her slow thought there slumbered an unlimited capacity 

for suffering. Now even the elements were preying 

upon her morbid imagination. She could not sleep for 

the raging of the terrific wind, the incessant shaking 

of windows and doors, and all the sounds of a loosely 
142 


CATTLE 


143 


built old ranch house, rattling and trembling in the 
furious tempest. As she lay in bed, her face crushed 
into her pillow, her hands over her ears, as though to 
deaden the roar of the wind, she could not rid her mind 
of the thought of the man she hated. She was doomed 
that night to relive the hideous hours spent with him, 
until, the vision becoming intolerable to her fevered 
mind, she sprang up in bed, and rocking herself to and 
fro like one half demented, sat in judgment upon her 
own acts. 

Why had she not killed herself ? Why was she living 
on? Why was she crouched here now upon her bed, 
when the Ghost River was at hand? True, it was 
frozen over, but there were great water holes, where 
the cattle came to drink, and into one of these she 
might throw herself as into a deep well. Oblivion would 
come then. Her sick mind would no longer conjure up 
the loathsome vision of Bul^ Langdon, and her ears 
would be deaf to the taunting, beating challenge of the 
wind, calling to her with its roaring voice to come forth 
and fight hand to hand with the fates that had crushed 
her. 

“I got to go out!” she moaned. “I got to go out! 
I can’t live no longer.” 


144 


CATTLE 


She put her foot over the side of the bed, and with 
her head uplifted she listened to what her disordered 
mind fancied was a voice out of the river, calling to 
her above the raging of the wind. And as she sat in 
the dark room, above the raving of the wind, she heard 
indeed a call—a living voice. Instantly she drew up 
tensely, holding her breath the more clearly to catch 
the faint cry. 

“Nettie! Nettie!” 

It was her mistress. She was out of bed, fumbling 
for the matches. 

The Bar Q was equipped with electricity, but the 
wires were not connected with the hired girl’s room. 
It was a pitch-dark night. Frightened as she was of 
the darkness and the storm, the cry of her well-loved 
mistress awoke all the defensive bravery of her nature, 
and she called aloud in reply, feeling along the walls, 
groping her way to the door. 

“I’m coming, Mrs. Langdon! I’m coming! I’m 
coming!” 

In the hall she found the electric button, and hurried 
across to Mrs. Langdon’s room. She found the cattle¬ 
man’s wife propped high up on her pillow, breathing 
with the difficulty of an asthmatic. The window was 


CATTLE 


145 


wide open, and the shades flapped angrily and tore at 
the rollers. The face on the bed smiled up wanly at 
Nettie in the reflected light from the hall. 

“Oh, Mrs. Langdon, did you call me? Do you want 
something ?” 

“Yes, dear. I thought maybe you wouldn’t mind 
closing my window for me. I tried to get up myself, 
but I had a sort of presentiment that—that you were 
awake and that perhaps you would—would like to come 
to me.” 

“Oh, I was awake, wide, wide awake. I couldn’t sleep 
to save myself. Isn’t the wind terrible!” 

“It’s dying down, I think.” 

“Oh, it’s fiercer than ever,” cried the girl wildly. 
“It’s just terrible. I can’t bear to hear it. I been 
awake all night. Just seems as if that wind was shoutin’ 
and screamin’ and makin’ mock of me, Mrs. Langdon. 
It’s banging upon my—heart. I hate the wind. I think 
it’s alive—a horrible, wild thing. It fights and laughs 
at me. It’s driving me mad.” 

“Ah, Nettie, you are not yourself these days. It is 
not the wind, but what is in your heart that speaks. 
We can even control the wind if we wish. Christ did, 


146 


CATTLE 


and the Christ spirit is in us all, if we only knew how 
to use it.” 

Nettie had closed the windows. On her knees by 
Mrs. Langdon’s bed, she was pulling the covers up and 
tucking them closely about her, and chafing the thin, 
cold hands. 

“You’re cold. Your hands are just like ice. I’m 
going downstairs to heat some water and fill the hot- 
water bag for you.” 

“No, no, Nettie. You go right back to bed. I’ll go 
down myself by and by, if I feel the need of the bag.” 

But though Nettie promised to go back to bed, she 
hurried down to the lower floor. She had no longer 
fear of the wind or the darkness. Her mind was intent 
upon securing the hot-water bag, and she built up a 
fire in the dead range, and set the kettle upon it. 

She was bending over the wood-box, picking out a 
likely log, when something stirred behind her. Still 
stooping, she remained still and tense. Slowly the 
Bull’s great arms reached down from behind and en¬ 
folded her. 

The noise of the wind had deadened his approach to 
the house. He had come through the living room to 


CATTLE 


147 


the opened kitchen door, by the stove of which was the 
bending girl. 

She twisted about in his arms, only to bring her face 
directly against his own. She was held in a vise, in the 
arms of the huge cattleman. His hoarse whispers were 
muttered against her mouth, her cheek, her neck. 

He chuckled and gloated as she fought for her free¬ 
dom, dumbly, for her thoughts flew up to the woman 
upstairs. Above all things, Mrs. Langdon must be 
spared a knowledge of that which was happening to 
Nettie. 

“Ain’t no use to struggle! Ain’t no use to cry,” he 
chortled. “I got you tight, and there ain’t no one to 
hear. I been thinkin’ of you day and night, gell, for 
months now, and I been countin’ off the minutes for 
this.” 

She cried in a strangled voice: 

“She’s upstairs! She’ll hear you! Oh, she’s coming 
down. Oh, don’t you hear her? Oh, for the love of 
God ! let me go.” 

The man heard nothing but his clamoring desires. 

“Gimme your lips!” said the Bull huskily. 

The clipclop of those loose slippers clattering on the 
stairs broke upon the hush that had fallen in the kitchen. 


148 


CATTLE 


Through all her agony Nettie heard the sound of those 
little feet, and she knew—she felt—just when they had 
stopped at the lower step as Mrs. Langdon clung to 
the bannister. Slowly the wife of the cowman sank to 
the lowest step. She did not lose consciousness, but 
an icy stiffness crept over her face; her jaw dropped, 
and a glaze came like a veil before her staring eyes. 

With a superhuman effort Nettie had obtained her 
release. She sprang to Mrs. Langdon, and groveled at 
her feet. 

“Oh, Mrs. Langdon, it ’twant my fault. I didn’t 
mean to do no harm. Oh, Mrs. Langdon, I wisht I’d 
heeded the wind! It must’ve been warning me. I wisht 
I’d gone to the Ghost River, when it called to me to 
come.” 

Mrs. Langdon’s head had slowly dropped forward, 
just as if the neck had broken. Nettie, beneath her, 
sought the glance of her eyes, and saw the effort of the 
moving lips. 

“God’s—will,” said the woman slowly. “A dem-on- 
stration—of—God. I—had—to leave, Nettie. God’s 
will you—take—my—place.” 

Across the half-paralyzed face something flickered 


CATTLE 


149 


strangely like a faint smile. Then the girl saw her 
mistress fall, inert and still against the staircase. 

A loud cry broke from the frantic Nettie. 

“We’ve killed her! We’ve killed Mrs. Langdon!” 

“Killed her—nothing,” said the man hoarsely, his 
face twitching and his hands shaking. “I told you she 
was ’bout ready to croak, and you heard what she said. 
You was to take her place. That means-” 

Nettie had arisen, and her eyes wide with loathing 
she stared at him in a sort of mad fury. Somehow she 
seemed to grow strong and tall, and there was a light 
of murder in her eyes. 

“I’d sooner drown myself in the Ghost River,” she 
said. 

Like one gone blind she felt her way to her room, 
and this time the man did not follow her. 

The wind raved on; the windows shook; the door 
casements creaked as if an angry hand were upon them; 
the white curtains flapped in and out. There was the 
heavy tramp of men’s feet upon the stair; the rough 
murmur of men’s voices in the hall. She knew they 
were carrying the dead woman to her room. 

Hours of silence followed. The Bull had gone with 
his men to the bunkhouse, and she was alone in the 



150 


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house with the dead woman. For the first time, a sense 
of peace, a passionate gladness swept over the tortured 
girl. Mrs. Langdon would know the truth at last! 
She would have no blame in her heart for Nettie— 
Nettie, who had a psychic sense of the warm nearness 
and understanding of the woman who had passed away. 

As she dressed in the darkness of the room, Nettie 
talked to her, she believed was with her, catching her 
breath in trembling little sobs and laughs of reassur¬ 
ance. 

“You understand now, don’t you, and you don’t hold 
it against me? I didn’t mean no wrong. ... I done 
the best I could. You don’t ask me to stay now that 
you know, do you, dear?” 

The plaid woolen shawd, a Christmas gift from Mrs. 
Langdon, covered her completely. The gray light of 
dawn was filtering through the house; the wind had died 
down. In its place the snow was falling upon the land, 
spotless and silent. Nettie’s face was whiter than the 
snow as she left her room. Mrs. Langdon’s door was 
closed, and, hesitating only a moment, Nettie stole to it 
on tiptoe. With her face pressed against it, she called 
to the woman inside 


CATTLE 


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“Good-by, Mrs. Langdon. Nobody will ever be so 
kind to me in this world as you have been.” 

She listened, almost as if she heard that faint, sweet 
voice in reply Then, strangely comforted, she 
wrapped her cape closer about her, and in her rubbered 
feet Nettie Day stole down the stairs and went out into 
the storm. 


CHAPTER XVII 


T HE veteran geldings that had pulled Dr. McDer¬ 
mott for years over the roads of Alberta had 
long since been replaced by a gallant little Ford, 
that purred and grunted its way along the roads and 
trails in all kinds of weather, and performed miraculous 
feats over the roughest of trails, across fields, plowed 
land, chugging sturdily through to the medical man’s 
goal. 

Many of the farmers belonged to that type that 
seemed to believe implicitly in the proverb, “Where igno¬ 
rance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.” They laughed or 
poohpoohed the doctor’s warning admonitions in regard 
to the plague, already as far west as Winnipeg. They 
“joshed” and “guyed” him,“and asked: “Lookin’ for 
trade, doc? You can’t make me sick with your pills, 
so you better keep them to home. Haw, haw!” And 
they threw the disinfectant and pills (to be taken 
should certain symptoms develop) away out of sight 

and mind, and made jokes when he was gone about, 
152 


CATTLE 


153 


“Doc gettin’ cold feet like the city guys. If he don’t 
look out he’ll be gittin’ just like them paper collar 
dudes in town and want soothin’ syrup for white liver.” 
They hugged to themselves the imbecile delusion that 
since they lived a cleaner and healthier life than mere 
city dwellers, they would prove immune to diseases that 
were a peculiarity of the city. 

It may not be out of place to mention here that 
county and city hospitals numbered among their pa¬ 
tients far more people from the country than the cities, 
and that the insane asylums were almost wholly re¬ 
cruited from the lone farm and ranch houses, where the 
monotonous pressure of the long life of loneliness took 
its due toll of those condemned, as it were, to solitary 
confinement. 

Howbeit, the “doc” kept his stubborn vigil. He did 
not propose to be caught “napping,” and he traveled 
the roads of Alberta, going from ranch to ranch, with 
his warnings and instructions and despised pills. 

While returning from some such expedition into the 
foothills he stopped, in the dawn of the day, to fasten 
the curtains about his car, as the wind of the wild night 
before had turned with the morning into a snowstorm. 
A straight, level road was before him, and the doctor 


154 CATTLE 

figured on making Cochrane in half an hour. Up to 
this time, in spite of the weather and the perilous trail 
to Banff, he had had no trouble with the engine. Now, 
however, as he cranked, the Ford, a peculiarly tem¬ 
peramental and uncertain car, refused to produce the 
spark. He lifted the hood, made an inspection, cranked 
again and again; held his side, and groaned and grunted 
with the exertion, raged and cussed a bit, regretted the 
old veterans; then, throwing his dogskin coat over the 
engine, he searched for the trouble underneath. He 
was lying on his back, a sheepskin under him, tinkering 
away with the “dommed cantankerous works,” when, 
putting out his head to look for his wrench, he saw 
something approaching on the road that caused him to 
sit bolt upright in blank astonishment. 

Her cape flapping about her, her head weighed down 
with the falling snow, her eyes wide and blank, snow- 
blind, Nettie Day swept before the wind on the Banff 
trail. The doctor, on his fe§t now, blocked her further 
passage, for she seemed not to see him but to be walking 
in a somnambulist’s trance. 

“What are you doin’ on the road at this hour, lass?” 

She did not answer, but stared out blankly before 
her, shaking her snow-crowned head. 


CATTLE 


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A quick professional glance at the girl and the doctor 
realized her condition and the need for immediate 
action. She made no demur; indeed, was touchingly 
meek, as he assisted her into the car. He tucked the 
fur robe about her, buttoned the curtains tightly, and, 
his face puckered with concern, he poured out a stiff 
“peg” of whisky. She drank mechanically, gulping 
slightly as the spirits burnt her throat. Her eyes were 
drooping drowsily, and when the doctor put his sheep¬ 
skin under her head, she sighed with intense weariness, 
and then lay still at the bottom of the car. 

The doctor “doggoned” that engine, shoved the 
crank in, and, miraculously, there was the healthy chug- 
chug of the engine, and the little car went roaring on 
its way. 

“You’re a dommed good lad!” gloated Dr. McDer¬ 
mott and pulled on his dogskin gloves, wiped the frost 
from the glass, threw a glance back to make sure the 
girl was all right, and put on top speed. 


CHAPTER XVIII 


T HE Lady Angella Loring arose at five in the 
morning, put on overalls, sheepskin coat, woolen 
gauntlets, and heavy overshoes. She tramped through 
the steadily falling snow to her barn, which housed a 
cow, a sow, a mare heavy in foal, a saddle horse and 
the poultry. 

The March winds that had raged all the previous 
night had turned with the morning to a snowstorm, and 
the flakes were now falling so heavily that the barn was 
only just visible from the house as the woman rancher 
plodded through the blinding flakes. 

First she threw into the pig-pen the pails of swill 
and mush she had brought from the house, then watered 
the stock, no easy matter, for the pumped water froze 
quickly in the trough, and she was forced to refill it 
several times. That done, she climbed into the hay¬ 
loft, and with her pitchfork thrust down through the 
openings the morning feed for the cow, carefully meas¬ 
ured chop from the bin for the mare, allowing half a 
156 


CATTLE 


157 


pail of oats and a bunch of hay for the saddle horse; 
she threw to the chickens, hens that had followed hun¬ 
grily in her wake, a pan full of ground barley and 
wheat seasoned with cayenne pepper, epsom salts and 
bits of bones and eggshells. 

Finally she went to her milking. The cow was fresh, 
and she had a full pail. Half of this, however, she fed 
to the restless little calf, nosing near its mother, and 
trying to shake off the muzzle that Angella had snapped 
on the night before in order to wean it. The task of 
feeding the calf required patience and time, for the 
restive little “dogie” nearly knocked over the pail, and 
had to be taught how to drink by feeling the woman’s 
fingers thrust, wet with the milk, into its mouth. She 
was more than an hour about her chores. With the 
half-filled pail in one hand, she tramped back to the 
house through the snow, falling now more heavily than 
before. 

Before leaving the house Angella had lit her fire, and 
now the place was warm and snug, and the singing 
kettle lent it an air of cheer. There was a certain 
attractiveness about the poor shack on the prairie, in 
spite of its rough, bare log walls and two wee windows. 
Though she chose to wear men’s clothing, and had cut 


158 


CATTLE 


her hair like a man’s, yet one had only to look about 
that room to perceive that the eternal feminine had 
persisted notwithstanding her angry and pitiful attempt 
to quench it. 

She had made most of the furniture herself, crude 
pieces fashioned from willow fence posts and grocery 
boxes, yet they betrayed a craftsman’s talent, for the 
chairs, though designed for use, were rustic and pretty, 
and she had touched them in spots with bright red 
paint. The table, over which a vivid red oilcloth was 
nailed, made a bright patch of color in the room. Red, 
in most places, for decorative purposes, can be used 
only sparingly, but in a bleak log shack a splash of 
this ruddy color gives both warmth and cheer. The 
floor had been scrubbed until it was almost white, and 
a big red-brown cowhide made a carpet near the couch, 
which was covered with a calfskin. Indian ornaments 
and beadwork, bits of crockery and pewter were on the 
shelves that lined one side of the shack, and where also 
she kept her immaculately shining kettles, cooking uten¬ 
sils and dishes. A curtain of burlap sacks, edged with 
scarlet cloth, hung before the bedroom doorway. The 
pillows on the spotless bed were covered with cases made 
of flour bags. A large grocers’ box, into which shelves 


CATTLE 


159 


had been nailed, was also covered with similar cloth and 
served as a sort of dressing table. Two chairs, made 
from smaller boxes, were padded with burlap, and a 
triangular shelf with a curtain before it made a closet 
in the corner of the room. 

A huge gray cat followed the woman recluse about 
the room, sleepily rubbing itself against her, and pur¬ 
ring with contentment when she picked it up in her 
arms. 

Angella made her breakfast of oatmeal and tea, 
serving from the stove directly onto her plate. Her 
cat nestled in her lap while she breakfasted, and she 
smoothed it absently as she ate. 

Time had smoothed out the lines on her face instead 
of adding to them, and the strained look of suffering 
iij her eyes had given way to a healthy gaze. Her skin 
had almost the fresh color of a girl’s. Her hair had 
grown abundantly, though it still was short and almost 
gray, but its natural curliness lent her face a soft and 
youthful air. There was no sign of the dread disease 
which had once threatened her life. She looked normal 
and wholesome as she sat at her table, her cat in her 
lap, deep in a brown study. It would be hard to say 
what filled Angella’s thoughts when she was thus shut in 


160 


CATTLE 


alone in her shack upon the prairie. She had ceased 
long since to conjure up bitter visions of the man who 
was responsible for her father’s death and her own exile. 
Her thoughts, at least, were no longer unbearably pain¬ 
ful as in those early days when first she had come to 
Alberta, and many a day and night, shut in alone with 
her dismal secret, she had wrestled in bitter anguish 
with the crowding thoughts that came like ghosts to 
haunt her. 

However, even in winter she had little enough time 
for thinking. Her life was crowded with work. When 
she had finished her meal, she washed her dishes, made 
her bed, kneaded the dough for her weekly baking, set 
a pot of beans, soaked overnight, into the oven, and 
prepared to go out again, this time to the pasture, 
where her few head of stock “rustled” for their feed all 
winter. A snowstorm at this time of year is always 
dangerous for the breeding stock dropping their calves 
with the approach of the spring. There were water 
holes, too, in the frozen slough that had to be broken 
in every day so that the cattle might have the water 
they needed. Angella, ax in hand, opened the door of 
her shack. A gale of wind and snow almost blinded her, 
so that at first she did not see the Ford that was plow- 


CATTLE 


161 


ing its way noisily and pluckily down the road allow¬ 
ance that led to her house. At the honk of the doctor’s 
horn, which he worked steadily to attract her, she 
peered out through the storm, and she turned to the 
gate, where the car had now stopped. 

She never encouraged the visits of Dr. McDermott, 
who had saved her life when first she had come to 
Alberta; but neither w^as she ever uncivil when he did 
come. Time had accustomed her to his regular calls, 
and, in truth, though she would not have admitted it 
for anything in the world, she had come to look forward 
to these visits, and to depend upon them for her news 
of the world, which she so bitterly told herself she had 
cast off forever. 

Now, as his ruddy face was thrust through the cur¬ 
tains, Angella, frowning slightly, tramped to the car. 

“Are you strong enough to lend me a hand lifting 
something?” asked the doctor. 

“Certainly I’m strong enough. What do you mean?” 

Dr. McDermott, out of the car now, unbuttoned the 
back curtains, and revealed to the amazed Angella the 
still heavily sleeping Nettie. 

“There’s a sick lass here,” he said solemnly, “and a 
lass in sore trouble, I’m thinking.” 


162 


CATTLE 


A strange expression had come into the face of An- 
gella Loring. Not so long since, it seemed to her, she 
had seen as in a dream this girl now lying on the floor 
of the doctor’s car leaning over her, and had regarded 
her with the tender, compassionate gaze of her own 
mother. In the days of semi-consciousness that had 
followed her first seizure, the Englishwoman could en¬ 
dure the sight and touch of no one but the girl with 
the Madonna face. Without realizing what was amiss, 
all she knew was that Nettie was now as helpless as she 
had been when the girl had cared for her, and without 
a word or a question she helped the doctor lift Nettie 
out of the car and to carry her into the house. 

Angella Loring believed that there was nothing about 
her of which this Scotch doctor approved. He came, 
she thought, merely to exercise his abnormal habit of 
interference in other folks’ affairs and to find fault 
with her chosen manner of life. She had at first, in her 
desire to be alone, not hesitated to tell him she pre¬ 
ferred her own company to any other. He had barked 
back that her taste was unnatural, and it would take 
more than “a bitter-tongued lass” to drive him from 
his duty. Questioned sarcastically as to what he con¬ 
ceived his duty to be, he had replied solemnly, “To 


CATTLE 


163 


keep an eye on you, lass, and to see that you come to 
no harm.” 

Furious as this gratuitous resolve to care for her 
had made the woman who believed she could fend for 
herself in the world, his answer had nevertheless brought 
the bitter tears to her angry eyes, so that she could 
not find words for a retort. The doctor’s intention to 
protect the woman by no means made him lenient in 
his judgment of her; he denounced her cut hair as out¬ 
rageous ; her men’s clothes as disgraceful, and her work 
in the field as against nature. She secretly enjoyed 
his explosion of rage when she took service at Bar Q. 

No lass, declared the doctor, in her sober senses 
would disfigure herself by cutting off her head the hair 
that her Maker had planted there. No true woman 
would wear a mon’s clothes. Mere contact with a wild 
brute like Bull Langdon would muddy any pure woman 
in the land. Her obsession—which is what he termed 
her aversion to his own sex—and her unnatural life 
alone was a pathological matter, for which she needed 
to be treated as for the unfortunate illness she had 
contracted in London. Some day, he warned her, she 
would thank him for the one cure as well as for the 
other 


164 


CATTLE 


She let him talk on, usually disdaining to answer, 
and she pursued her way undeterred by his wholesale 
condemnation of her and her course of life. 

Yet Angella Loring, holding a little baby in her arms 
for the first time in her life, and looking down with 
dewy eyes upon the small blonde head resting so help¬ 
lessly against her breast, could she have seen the face 
of the country doctor as he looked at the cropped bent 
head, would have known that all his thoughts of her 
were not wholly hard. 

Glaring up at him to hide the impending tears, she 
almost surprised that look of grave tenderness on the 
rough face of the man who had known her as a child. 

“She doesn’t want it,” said Angella Loring. “Her 
own child! Well, then, I’ll keep it! It shan’t want. 
I’ll care for it.” 

“It’s a wee laddie—born before its time, and nane 
too strong.” He had a habit when unduly moved of 
lapsing into Gaelic, and what he muttered was unin¬ 
telligible to the woman, wholly taken up with the baby 
in her arms. Could she have understood him she 
would have heard the doctor say that a woman who 
could mother another woman’s “bairn” would be a 
good mother to her own. 


CATTLE 


165 


Outside the snow was still heavily falling. Great 
mounds were piling up on all sides. That world of 
snow might have appalled the stranger, but to the 
farmer it meant certain moisture in the soil. A spring 
snowstorm was even more desirable for the land than 
rain, as it melted gradually into the earth. Already 
the sun was gleaming through the falling snowflakes, 
and the intense cold had abated. 

“Weel, weel. I’ll be off for q, while, lass. There’s 
much still to attend to.” 

“You can’t go out in that storm,” said Angella 
roughly. “Wait, I’ll get you something to eat. Not 
even your Ford could plow through snow like that.” 

“Maybe not, and I’ll not be taking the Ford.” 

“Well, I’ve no vehicle to lend you.” 

“I’ll go afoot,” said the doctor, wrapping his woolen 
scarf about his neck, preparatory to going out. 

“You’re a fool to go out,” said Angella crossly. 
“Wait till you have a cup of coffee anyway.” 

“I’ll be going just across the land, to the lad’s cabin. 
I heard last night that he was back.” 

“Who’s cabin? What land?” 

“Young Cyril Stanley’s—the scallawag. I’ll have 


166 


CATTLE 


thot to say to him, I’m thinking, will bring him across 
in a hurry.” 

“He needn’t come here!” Angella had started up 
savagely. “I don’t want any man here, least of all a 
dog like that who’d do such a thing to a girl. He can 
keep away from my house. He’s not fit to—to even 
look at her now. No man is.” 

“Weel, weel, ’tis true, but we’re all liable to mistakes, 
ma’am, and young blood is hot and careless, and who 
are we—you and I—to judge another? We must look 
to our own consciences first, ma’am.” 

“Yes, stand up for him—defend him. You men all 
hang together. I know you all, and I hate you. I-” 

She broke off, for the doctor was looking at her with 
such a strange look of mingled earnestness and tender¬ 
ness, that the stormy words died on her lips, and she 
dropped her wet face upon the soft little one in her 
arms. 

Dr. McDermott closed the door softly. 



CHAPTER XIX 


T HE tour of the Bar Q purebred bulls had been 
a disastrous and costly one. From city to city, 
at a staggering expense, went the prize herd, 
from which extraordinary things had been expected. 
Wherever they touched it was their misfortune to be 
turned back or shunted farther afield. That winter 
the country was suffering from the fearful scourge, 
which having stricken down its victims by the thousands 
in Europe had passed over the sea to America. 

Then there was a time when the Bar Q herd was con¬ 
demned by a harassed and irritated authority who, 
upon the diagnosis of an incompetent veterinary sur¬ 
geon, pronounced the cattle to be suffering from foot 
and mouth disease, and an order was issued for the 
slaughter of the entire herd, and the burning of all 
sheds, cars or other houses in which they had been 
penned. Bull Langdon found himself held indefinitely 
in the States, as he fought by injunction proceedings 
the destruction of his herd, which would have meant an 

incalculable loss—even ruin—to him. 

167 


168 


CATTLE 


The adjournments and delays, the long, drawn-out 
legal processes, kept the herd in the States from De¬ 
cember till February, and when at last they were freed 
the penned-in brutes were in a deteriorated condition. 
Their long confinement, the unaccustomed traveling, 
and the lack of proper care, made the once smooth 
bulls difficult to handle and dangerous, so that by the 
time the herd was ready to start back for Canada 
more than one of the “hands” who had come to the 
States with them deserted the outfit rather than risk 
looking after the uncertain animals on tour. 

Bull Langdon, raging and fretting over the enforced 
delays in the States, harassed by his losses and his 
failure to obtain a showing of the famous herd, was in 
a black mood when at last the outfit reached Barstairs. 

Here fresh trouble awaited him. Of all the bulls, the 
Prince had proved the most dangerous and erratic of 
temper; his ceaseless bellowing and attempts to break 
loose had done much to make the outfit unpopular 
throughout their travels. Always uncertain and dan¬ 
gerous, back at Barstairs he became well-nigh uncon¬ 
trollable, and there was no “hand” of the entire outfit, 
save Cyril, who dared approach the raging beast, as 
behind heavily barred fences he ranged up and down 


CATTLE 


169 


restlessly, calling his resounding cries to the cattle that 
he could smell even if he could not see them in adjoining 
pastures, and something of the wild spirit of the animal 
appealed to his owner, whose own pent-up rage seemed 
to find vent in a savage roaring voice. A kindred spirit 
bound them together. Often, when the exasperations 
of the tour threatened to overwhelm him, he would go 
to where the Prince ranged up and down within the 
narrow space of his shed bellowing and moaning his 
demands for freedom. At such times Bull Langdon, 
from the other side of the bars, would call to the bull, 
not soothingly, but in a tone of encouragement, as 
though cheering and “rooting” for the rebellious brute. 

“Go to it!” he would snarl through the bars. “Let 
’em know you’re here! Keep ’em awake. Make their 
nerves jump. Go to it, bull!” 

Up to the time of their return to Barstairs, Cyril 
Stanley had looked after the animal, and so long as he 
was at hand the Prince remained fairly well under con¬ 
trol. But Cyril, who had been silent and morose all 
through the tour in the States, suddenly decided, once 
back in Canada, to quit the outfit. The cattleman 
received his quiet request to be relieved of his job with 
consternation and fury. 


170 


CATTLE 


What did he want to leave for? Hadn’t he had his 
pay raised four times already? Hadn’t he got $500 
he’d been promised? He had practically full charge 
of the herd already, and the foreman’s job and wages 
would belong to him before spring. 

But neither bluster nor curses moved him, and the 
offer of increases in wages, heavy bonuses and enormous 
salary were steadily refused. Money meant nothing 
now to Cyril. He was heartily sick of the whole busi¬ 
ness. He felt the restlessness that comes to a man as 
soon as he feels himself free again and on his native 
soil, and longs to be moving along the trail. To roam 
from place to place seemed all that was left to him 
since his dream of a home had been shattered, and long 
absence had not cured him of the sickness of love. He 
had had enough of cattle. He was done with ranching, 
and when the Bull demanded just what it was that he 
proposed to do, he answered after a thoughtful pause: 
“Think I’ll hike for Bow Claire. Plenty of work there, 
I guess. The river’ll be high when the snows begin to 
melt, and they’ll be wantin’ ‘hands’ and loggers at the 
camp.” 

Meanwhile, Bull Langdon found his hands full. 
Those were the days of labor unrest when there were 


CATTLE 


171 


a dozen employers in the employment offices for every 
employee; when wages were soaring; when men looked 
the “bosses” squarely in the face, and made their own 
terms. The cattleman had returned at a time when 
labor was so scarce and independent in Alberta, that 
many of the farmers were forced to do their own work, 
or grub together with other farmers on shares. It is 
certain that there was not a ranchman in the country 
willing to work with Bull Langdon. Even those he had 
formerly been able to tyrannize over gave him a wide 
berth; never had the Bar Q been so short-handed, and 
the departure of Cyril, who was invaluable among the 
purebred, was a real disaster to the Bull camp. 

For some time Langdon had been beset with an almost 
insensate craving for Nettie Day. All the time he had 
been in the States she had never been wholly absent 
from his mind, though the anxieties of the tour had 
kept his desire for the girl in check; but once back in 
Canada, his mind reverted to her incessantly. 

As he stood watching Cyril Stanley disappear at a 
slow lope over the hills, it occurred to him that he might 
be making for Bar Q and Nettie, and the thought gave 
him pause. The idea that Nettie and Cyril should come 
together again was more than he could stand. The 


172 


CATTLE 


blood rushed madly to his head, and everything went 
red before his eyes. 

Batt Leeson, a hand who had served directly under 
Cyril, was the second-best upon the place; he could be 
trusted to look after the cattle, and was known to be 
a conscientious workman, although he had never yet 
been entrusted with any position of authority. When 
Cyril’s job was offered him, therefore, he was rather 
afraid and hesitant. However, there was no foreman 
at this time at the Bull camp, which had been stripped 
for the trip to the States, and there was no other man 
in the outfit fit to be one. 

The Bull considered the possibility of Cyril’s chang¬ 
ing his mind and returning to Bar Q. He knew what 
logging in the lumber camps meant, and that though 
the work would not daunt the young man, the food and 
the dirt would. The daily association with them “damn 
dirty forriners,” as Bull named the Russian loggers, 
would soon be too much for a white man, he decided, 
and counted upon Cyril’s return. 

When he left the camp he was by no means easy in 
his mind about his cattle. He took the trail for Bar Q 
in his big car, racing ahead in the teeth of a veritable 
cyclone, but the good car held its straight course gal- 


CATTLE 


173 


lantly. It was late at night when Bull Langdon reached 
the ranch in the foothills, and the noise of his arrival 
could not be heard above the gale. When he saw that 
light in the kitchen, he came warily upon the place. 
Sniffing the air like a bloodhound tracking down his 
prey, he cautiously approached the kitchen where 
Nettie’s light still burned. Concealed in the darkness 
of the living room his greedy eyes devoured the girl as 
she moved about the room busy at the great range. All 
thought was swept from his mind, leaving only the mad 
desire to crush in his arms once again the girl who 
awakened in him this overmastering passion. 

Meanwhile, Cyril Stanley had mechanically turned 
his horse’s head toward the foothills. He had no defi¬ 
nite purpose in mind; he was vaguely conscious of being 
hungry for a sight of Nettie. His long absence had 
not cured him; he loved the girl as deeply as on that 
first day when their eyes had met across the space of 
the poor D. D. D. shack, and the room was full of 
laughter. 

How pretty she had looked, in spite of her shabby 
dress; how her hair had shone in the sun! How gentle 
and sweet and good she had been to her little brothers 


174 


CATTLE 


and sisters 1 Even the strange woman in the C. P. R. 
shack had melted before Nettie’s shy effort to help her 
in those days, reflected the unhappy Cyril. No one 
could have resisted her, and he told himself that it was 
small wonder that he had “fallen so hard” for her. He 
had seen many women in the big cities of America, but 
had found no face like Nettie’s. No, he wouldn’t change 
his girl for any girl in the States. And as in his thought 
he called her “his,” he awoke suddenly to the realization 
that Nettie was “his” no longer; someone had stolen 
her heart from him! Yet such a longing was on him 
to see the beloved face again, that he resolved to risk 
her displeasure by going to Bar Q before burying him¬ 
self in the deep woods at the lumber camp. 

On the road he fell in with a couple of riders from 
the hill country, and their suggestive gossip aroused 
him somewhat from his gloom, for he caught the girl’s 
name and the sneer that came into their voices caused 
him to sit up abruptly, his hat pushed back, and his 
eyes full of dangerous interrogation. They protested 
they had only been “stringing” him, and rode rapidly 
off. What they had hinted was that the quicker the 
girl at Bar Q was married, the better, and that he, 
Cyril Stanley, had come back only just in time. 


CATTLE 


175 


Cyril turned this over heavily in his mind, shaking 
his head as though the problem were beyond him, but 
he changed his course away from the hill, deciding to 
spend a few days at his homestead. He would stay in 
the little house he had built for Nettie; he wanted to 
look over the place that was to have been their home. 
He would go to Bar Q later. At least, Nettie would 
not refuse to bid him good-by. 

As he rode along, his hat over his eyes, smarting 
tears bit at the lids, and the heart of the lad who used 
once to go singing along the trail and about his work 
was heavy as lead within him. 

At the homely little cabin, faith and confidence in 
Nettie seemed to come back to him; perhaps her strange 
behavior had all been some hideous mistake. Perhaps 
she had been merely angry at his going to Barstairs. 
Well, a girl had a right to be angry, and maybe she 
had gotten over it by now. There was no accounting 
for a girl’s moods, he reasoned; he “wasn’t no saint 
himself” to hold anything against her. If only Nettie 
would smile at him again he would forget all he had 
suffered during all those cruel months. If only she 
would look at him and speak to him as she used to do. 
Nettie! His girl! His own, out of all the world. It 


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had been love at first sight; so much they had always 
agreed on, and she had been fond of repeating that it 
was also a love that would never die. She had meant 
it then, as they sat hand in hand amongst the berry 
bushes, with the evening sunlight on the tree-tops glis¬ 
tening like moon rays on the whispering leaves. 

The longer Cyril stayed there gazing around the 
cabin that was filled with things Nettie herself had 
helped him to make, the stronger grew his hope and 
faith. A new exhilaration suddenly possessed him, 
making him feel that life was worth living again. He 
looked with a new warmth and kindness upon the world, 
and not even the slowly gathering storm that darkened 
the March day could quell his mounting spirits. 

He was whistling and bustling about the shack when 
he heard a banging upon the door, and opened the door 
to find Dr. McDermott standing there. He greeted his 
old friend with unaffected delight, for the doctor was 
always associated in his thoughts with Nettie, whom 
he had brought into the world in the best day’s work 
he ever accomplished, so thought Cyril. 

“Hello, doc. Gee, it’s great to see your good old mug 
again. How’d you know I was back? How’re you?’ 

But the old doctor was scowling at him like an angry 


CATTLE 


IT? 


bulldog, underlip thrust out, and his face puckered 
into lines of unmistakable disapproval; worse still, he 
was pointedly refusing Cyril’s proffered handshake. 

“No, sir,” he said, “I’ll not shake hands with a scalla- 
wag. Not till he’s done the right thing, by gad!” 

“Wow, doc! What’s bitin’ you?” 

“Lad,” said Dr. McDermott sternly, “I’m not here 
on any pleasure call. I’ve come as a matter of duty, 
mon to mon to ask—to demand—that you do the right 
thing by that puir lass.” 

“Lass? Who do you mean?” 

“You know domned well who I mean. None other, 
mon, but Nettie Day.” 

At the mention of that name Cyril’s face turned sud¬ 
denly gray and stern. 

“There are certain things I don’t discuss with no 
man, doc. One of them’s—Nettie. I don’t let no man 
talk to me about her. Some coyotes on the road stopped 
me, and started to blat some stuff about her, but they 
shut up tight enough and gave me the heels of their 
broncs before they’d barely got started with that line 
of talk. And I ain’t lettin’ even an old friend like you 
say anything about Nettie. What’s fallen between her 
and me is our affair.” 


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Dr. McDermott’s fist came heavily down upon the 
table. 

“Lad, ye’re going to marry that girl, if I have to 
shove you by your neck to the parson.” 

A light flamed in the boy’s face; his eyes widened as 
he stared incredulously at the doctor. 

“I say,” he said, all but weeping for joy, “that’s a 
good joke on me. Is that what you’re drivin’ at, doc? 
Marry her! Say, I’d marry .Nettie Day this blessed 
minute if she’d have me!” 

“Very good, lad. You’ll have your chance. I’ve got 
her now at Miss Loring’s. I’ll go myself after the 
missionary, if you’ll lend me a horse. Trail’s not fit 
for a car. I’ll do my best to get back first thing in the 
morning. Meanwhile, you’ll have a chance to get your 
house in shape. You’ll want it to shine for that wife 
and baby of yours.” 

“That wi—and— Say, what’s the joke, anyway?” 

The doctor was now in better humor. His errand 
had been highly successful, and after all a lad was only 
a lad, and he liked young Cyril Stanley. There was 
good stuff in Cyril—good Scotch stuff. 

Cyril, taking the doctor’s remark for one of the 
coarse jokes commonly cracked in that countryside at 


CATTLE 


179 


the time of a wedding, laughed half-heartedly, but the 
words stuck queerly in his mind. To change the sub¬ 
ject, he said: 

“Doc, what do you suppose ever possessed Nettie to 
treat me as she did? When I got back from Barstairs 
—let me see, that was last October—no, a bit before 
that—what does she do but run away from me, and 
when I chased after her, she turned me down dead cold. 
Said she’d changed—wasn’t the same, and a—and—she 
simply sent me packing—made me think someone’d cut 
me out with her and-” 

Cyril broke off. The memory of that time was still 
an open wound in his mind. 

“I don’t blame her a bit,” blustered the doctor, in 
assumed anger. “If it wasn’t for that baby now, she’d 
do better to send you packing altogether. What’s the 
matter with you young people today? Can’t you hold 
back like respectable folk? Don’t you realize that even 
though you marry the gell now, she’ll always be branded 
with the shame of this thing; and it’s not only the lass 
to be considered, there’s the innocent child—the baby 
to consider.” 

“That’s the third or fourth time that you’ve said 



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that word. What do you mean, anyway? What baby? 
Whose ?” 

“Whose? Why, your own, lad—yours and Nettie’s.” 

“Mine and— Have you gone plumb crazy, doc?” 

“Not I, lad. I helped bring your child into the world 
this morning, and Nettie’s resting quiet now, and wait¬ 
ing for you, I have no doubt. Now, lad-” 

He broke off, for something in the look and motion 
of Cyril Stanley stopped him from further reproach. 

“I’ve no intention of being hard on you. Young 
blood—is—young blood, and I was young myself once.” 

Cyril had staggered back, like one mortally struck. 
Slowly the truth had dawned upon him, and with the 
realization that Nettie had been false to him, something 
primitive and furious seemed to shake the foundations 
of his being; something that was made up of outrage 
and ungodly hatred. 

“So—she’s—got—a baby, has she?” 

“A wee lad-” 

“And you come to me—to me to get a name for it!” 

“To you? Who else?” 

“Who else?” jeered the lad frantically. “Ask her!” 

Dr. McDermott recoiled before the savage glare in 
the young man’s eyes, and slowly he began to realize 




CATTLE 


181 


the truth. He was stunned by the thought that an¬ 
other man than Cyril had been the cause of the girl’s 
downfall. Who could it be? Slowly he turned the 
matter over in his mind, rejecting one by one each of 
the possible men he could think of, till at last the great 
sinister figure of the Bull loomed up before his mind’s 
eye. He began clearly to recall a certain day at Bar Q 
when he had caught the evil expression of the cowman’s 
face as, behind his wife’s back, he followed Nettie Day 
with his greedy, covetous eyes. 

Dr. McDermott’s shoulders seemed to bend as if a 
great burden lay upon them, and he looked long and 
searchingly at the furious boy before him. When he 
spoke his voice was shaken with emotion. 

“The Lord help you, lad!” he said. “The Lord help 
us all in our deep trouble. Give us sober and humble 
hearts. Teach us to bear as best we can the iniquities 
of the wicked who beset us. Amen.” 

The sound of the door closing fell like a lash on Cyril 
Stanley’s brain. Alone with his frenzy and despair, 
he looked wildly round as if to find some outlet for his 
feelings. A great ax lay on the floor near the out- 
kitchen door, and the young man seized it and swung 
it high in his hand. It crashed down upon the table, 


182 


CATTLE 


splintering it in two. Again and again the ax descended 
until everything he had bought for Nettie Day lay in 
fragments about the room. Then he took from the 
storeroom a five-gallon can of kerosene, and emptied 
it deliberately over the floor. 

He put on chapps, sheepskin, fur cap and spurs, 
tied up a few other necessaries in a bundle and walked 
heavily to the door. Outside, he smashed the windows 
and a gale of snow flew into the wrecked house. Lastly, 
he struck a match and, guarding the flame, he knelt 
in the doorway and threw it into a pool of kerosene. 

The flames around the floor crept like snakes, then 
leaped up the walls, and from the piles of broken chairs 
and tables went roaring to the roof. 

The house went up in a furious blaze. Long after 
Cyril Stanley had disappeared into the great timber 
country the smoke of his burning homestead rose above 
the blanket of snow, until the smoldering ruins were 
buried under the soft whiteness and covered from the 
eyes of the world. But later on the sunshine of the 
spring would melt the shroud away and reveal where 
his love lay ruined on the prairie. 


CHAPTER XX 


S PRING came late to Alberta that year, and it was 
May before the farmers were upon the land. 

Zero weather followed the heavy March snowfalls, 
and May was well advanced before the first thaw 
began. 

Angella Loring was particularly anxious that year 

to be upon her land early, for she wished to keep Nettie 

with her, and had conceived an ambitious scheme which 

she believed would tempt the girl to remain. Ever since 

her recovery Nettie had been waiting for the weather to 

break, so that she might go to Calgary and try to find 

work there, where she would be unknown, and Dr. 

McDermott had told her how great was the scarcity of 

help in the city. Angella, from the first day, had taken 

charge of the baby, and indeed it might have been her 

child rather than Nettie’s. For Nettie was afraid of 

this child of the Bull’s. Before the cold spell had 

broken, and while she was still weak, she would sit at 

the window and stare out over the bleak landscape with 
183 


184 


CATTLE 


unseeing eyes. Spring is always an unpleasant season 
in Alberta, and that year it was even worse than usual. 
While Angella was away at the barns or the fields busy 
with her work, Nettie found herself shut in alone with 
her baby, but she never went near it, or attempted to 
take it in her arms or caress it. 

The child was undersized and frail, but it cried very 
little, and its tiny, weird face looked curiously like a 
bird’s. There was something pitifully unfinished about 
it although it was in no way deformed. It had simply 
been forced into the world before its time, and denied 
the sustenance of its mother’s breast—for Nettie was 
unable to nurse her child—it made slow progress. At 
the end of April it weighed no more than the day it 
was born. 

If Nettie, immersed in her own sorrow, was oblivious 
of her child’s condition, its foster-mother was filled 
with alarm and anxiety. Dr. McDermott was no longer 
an unwelcome visitor at the shack, indeed he was often 
sent for when Jake, who had taken to haunting the 
ranch, and sleeping in Cyril’s deserted sheds, could be 
despatched upon such an errand. No matter where he 
was, or what he was doing, the doctor seldom failed 
to respond to Angella’s summons. Tramping into the 


CATTLE 


185 


shack, stamping the snow off his feet, he would look 
with pretended fierceness at the two women, looking 
for something to scold about and always, finding it, 
but although his words were rough, his hands were 
gentle as a mother’s as he took the baby in his arms. 
He would gaze intently at the little creature with all 
a parent’s anxiety while its mother held aloof, keeping 
her gaze riveted upon the window. 

More than once, Angella Loring found herself very 
close to the doctor, and looking up, he would see her 
eyes were misty with solicitude over “her” baby. To 
cover his own feelings, he would ask her to fetch this 
and that and she waited upon him meekly. Once 
kneeling by his side, as the baby lay upon his knees, 
she saw its little wan face puckered into something 
that she firmly declared was a smile. In her delight 
and excitement she put her arms around the baby on 
his knee, and before she realized what was happening 
she found her hand enclosed in the doctor’s warm clasp. 
Their eyes met, and the color slowly receded from her 
cheeks. 

That night, she went into the bedroom, carefully 
closing the burlap curtain between it and the outer 
room, and searching amongst the contents of the box 


186 


CATTLE 


she had brought with her from England, Angella 
Loring found something that was no familiar object in 
that prairie shack—a mirror—a woman’s hand mirror, 
of tortoiseshell, with a silver crest upon it. For some 
time she held it in her hand, face down, before she mus¬ 
tered courage to lift it slowly to her face. For a long 
time she gazed into the glass, the bright, haunted eyes 
slowly scanning the strange face, with its crown of 
soft gray curls. She was kneeling on the floor by her 
bed, and suddenly the hand holding the mirror fell into 
her lap, and Angella Loring said in a choking whisper 
looking down at her reflection, “I’m an old fool! God 
help me!” 

Her program for that season was an ambitious one 
for a fragile woman; she purposed to put in one hun¬ 
dred and fifty acres of crop, and to hay over sixty 
more acres, and not content with working her own. 
land, she intended to work and seed Cyril’s as well. 
This latter was the stake to which she hoped to tie 
Nettie to her. She felt sure that the girl would not 
fail to respond to this opportunity to help the man she 
loved, for according to the homestead law of that time, 
land had to be fenced, worked and lived upon for a 
certain term of years, and by abandoning his home- 


CATTLE 


187 


stead, Cyril stood to lose the quarter, besides the waste 
of all the work and money already expended upon the 
place. When Angella laid her proposition before 
Nettie, she was rewarded by the first sign of animation 
the girl had shown since the doctor had brought her 
to the ranch. Her apathy and despair fell from her, 
and when Angella told her that unless Nettie would 
give her the help she needed she would be obliged to 
employ hired hands which she could not afford, Nettie’s 
eagerness knew no bounds. 

“Oh my, yes, Angel, I just wisht you’d give me the 
chance. I’d love to do the work. I’ll do it alone if— 
you’ll let me—I’ll work my fingers to the bone to—to— 
make up to him—and to you, Angel.” 

“Thats all right. I’m glad you feel that way, be¬ 
cause I need your help badly. I believe it’s going to 
be a crop year anyway, because the snow when it does 
melt is bound to mean all sorts of moisture for the 
land. Meanwhile, we can do a bit of fencing. Mine 
need repairing badly, and so do parts of Cyril’s. 
We’ve got to cross fence between his pasture land and 
where the crop is to go in. He’s got quite a few head 
of horses and cattle running loose, I see, and they’ve got 
to be driven off the grain land. I’m going out after 


188 


CATTLE 


a couple of heavy horses of his I saw the other day 
on his land. I think I can corral them, and they’ll 
come in first rate for the plow.” 

“Oh, Angel, let me go. I understand horses better’n 
you do. It’s awful hard to drive them when they’ve 
been loose like that all winter. So let me go along.” 

“You’ll stay right here. Look here, now, I'm going 
to run things here, and you do as you’re told.” 

“Well, don’t forget to take a halter, will you, and 
Angel, you want to keep away from their hind feet— 
even if you are on horse. Sometimes they kick right 
out. Dad was lamed that way, drivin’ in wild horses. 
Got kicked while on horse-back, right in the shin. My, 
it was awful!” 

“I’m all right. Don’t you worry about me,” said 
Angella. “Mind the baby while I’m gone, and look 
here, if he cries, there’s barley gruel in that bottle. 
Heat it by standing it in hot water—but don’t let it 
get too hot. I think he’ll be all right till I get back.” 

Nettie did a curious thing that day when Angella had 
left her alone. She went over to the rough cot that 
Angella had made out of a grocery box for the baby, 
and for a long time she stood looking down at the little 
sleeper. Almost unconsciously her hand touched her 


CATTLE 


189 


baby’s tiny hand that clung at once to her finger and 
at that warm contact a flood of emotion overwhelmed 
Nettie’s heart. It was as if tentacles had reached out 
and fastened upon her very soul; the little curled up 
fist seemed to scorch her with its mute reproach and 
appeal for her affection. Nettie pulled her hand fiercely 
away, and fled into the adjoining room, her breath 
coming and going tumultuously. 

“I don’t want to love him,” she cried. “I don’t want 
to. He’s his , and I wisht I’d died before I—I—come 
to this.” 

Seeking some physical outlet for her pent-up feel¬ 
ings she looked about her, and saw a pair of scissors 
on Angella’s dressing table. A moment later she found 
herself slashing into her long hair. The heavy blonde 
braids dropped to the floor with a soft thud. Nettie, 
shorn of her beautiful hair, was not, however, disfigured, 
in fact her childlike, simple beauty seemed almost love¬ 
lier for the cropped head, accentuating her extreme 
youth. But when Angella coming in stopped on the 
threshold and stared at her condemningly, Nettie knew 
that she had done wrong. 

“Nettie Day, what you have done is an act of sheer 


190 


CATTLE 


vandalism,” said the woman, who herself had cut her 
own hair to the scalp. 

“Oh, Angel, I wanted to be like you. I didn’t want 

no more to be like a woman-” 

Angella’s face paled. 

“So I am not like a woman, then?” 

“I didn’t mean that, Angel. You’re more like a 
woman in your heart than anyone I ever knew, ’cept 
Mrs. Langdon, and I just wanted to make myself so 
that—so that no one would ever want to look at me 

again. Just’s if I was same as a man and-” 

“And I suppose you think you’ve succeeded,” said 
Angella dryly. “Never fear. It will take more than the 
cutting of your hair to keep men from you, Nettie 
Day. However, it’s your own hair, and I suppose you 
meant all right. They say ‘Hell is paved with good 
intentions.’ But you needn’t think that because I— 
was fool enough to—to—make a freak of myself, that 
I approve of you or anyone else doing it.” 

“I’m sorry, Angel. I’m awfully sorry. I—I want 
to be as much like you as I can be. I want to wear 

them men’s overalls too and do-” 

“As for the overalls, that’s all right, they're sensi¬ 
ble; but, look here, Nettie, don’t let me catch you doing 





CATTLE 


191 


anything like that to disfigure yourself again, and 
don’t you go slashing any more into your hair. It 
doesn’t look bad now, but even you would look a fright 
if you had cut it as I did—right to the scalp.” 

“It’s growing in now. And it looks—right pretty, 
Angel,” said Nettie wistfully. “D’you know, you ain’t 
nearly as ugly as you think you are,” she added with 
girlish naivete, which brought a chuckle from Angella, 
warming the baby’s bottle at the stove. 

They began to fence in mid-April. The ground was 
hard, and having no proper hole diggers they were at a 
still greater disadvantage. However, Angella said she 
did not want to waste any time on repairing fences, 
once the land was ready for the crop. Cyril’s quarter 
was already fairly well fenced, but the dividing line be¬ 
tween the two quarters had never been completed. Now 
that the two places were to be worked as one the line- 
fence had become unnecessary. By persistent labor 
upon their first task of the season, they achieved an 
inadequate protection for the proposed crop. The 
uneven line of barbed wire, set on unsteady posts, 
aroused the derisive condemnation of Dr. McDermott, 
who warned them that cattle would have no trouble 


192 


CATTLE 


in breaking through and that the two wires did not 
constitute a legal fence, three being the required num¬ 
ber. Angella, colder and more unbending than ever in 
her attitude to the doctor, rejoined that “they would 
take their chances this year.” 

The herd law was in force, and it was against the 
law for cattle to be at large on the road or road 
allowances in that particular part of the country. The 
doctor grouchily warned them that that concerned 
stray cattle, but there was absolutely nothing to pre¬ 
vent a herd driven by riders from going through. 
Nothing, returned Angella indignantly, except the fact 
that reputable riders had a professional sense of honor, 
so far as other people’s grain fields were concerned, and 
she knew none that would be likely to turn driven cattle 
into a grain field. Such things were not done in a 
country like Alberta. Besides, cattle were unlikely to 
be moved in the summer time, and by the fall, the 
harvest would be in, and the grain safe. 

“Have it your way,” returned the doctor. “But if 
you want to do a mon’s work, you ought to do it in 
a mon’s way.” This gratuitous remark was received 
in the disdainful silence it deserved. 

They had a truly gigantic task before them, the 


CATTLE 


193 


putting in of over one hundred and fifty acres of grain 
—flax, barley, oats, wheat, green feed and rye. 

As soon as the land was in condition to be worked, 
they began. For days they had been sorting over and 
mending harnesses and bridles, sharpening the imple¬ 
ments and getting everything into shape. Eight work 
horses had been brought up from the pasture, and for 
a few days had been fed oats and given especial care. 
Nettie had regained her strength and was invaluable to 
the less experienced, though self-reliant Angella because 
of her long familiarity with farm work and horses too. 

The baby went into the field with them, carried in 
a large box, where among its pillows, Nettie’s child 
slept in blissful unconsciousness of the tragedy of his 
existence. In the latter weeks he had been gaining 
strength, and his roving blue eyes had smiled more than 
once at the adoring Angella. 

Nettie went on the plow, the hardest of the imple¬ 
ments to ride. There had been some argument between 
the girls as to which implement each should ride, An¬ 
gella contending that Nettie was not yet in a fit condi¬ 
tion to stand the rough shaking on the plow; and Nettie 
stubbornly insisting that she felt “strong as an ox,” 
and that she had ridden the plow since she was a little 


194 


CATTLE 


girl. “Dad put me into the field when I was just ten,” 
she told Angella. “You know he couldn’t afford to stay 
home to work our quarter, because our land was so 
poor; he had to go out on other farms to make some 
wages, because we was such a hungry family, and it 
took sights of food to fill us all.” 

So Nettie rode the plow, and then the disc, while 
Angella took the harrow and the seeder. Angella only 
yielded the plow to Nettie when the girl pointed out 
that the seeder required “brains,” of which she sadly 
admitted she had little. She had never seeded, not 
even at home; Dad had always come back in time to do 
that. So Angella, feeling the importance of her two 
seasons’ experience in seeding, argued no more, and, 
seeded six inches deep, a precautionary measure, she 
told Nettie, against a dry year. The weather favored 
them; intermittent rains and flurries of snow kept the 
ground damp enough for fertilization, but not too wet 
for sowing. Nevertheless, said Angella, you never could 
tell about Alberta’s climate. Drought might start with 
June, and then where would the careless farmers be? 

This period of hard work diverted Nettie’s mind from 
its obsession of sorrow; for mind and body are alike 
exhausted a? the end of a day from sunrise to sunset. 


CATTLE 


195 


Intent upon being a first-rate helper, her mind ceased 
to dwell upon her troubles. 

Having finished the preparation of the ground and 
the seeding, they spent the next few weeks bringing 
their few head of stock to the corrals and all alone 
they branded, dehorned and vaccinated them against 
blackleg. Nettie then went over to Cyril’s quarter with 
the plow and broke new land, by no means an easy job, 
since the ground was rough virgin soil, where rocks and 
bushes and tree stumps abounded. Meanwhile Angella 
summer fallowed on her own quarter. 

July came in on a wave of intense heat. There was 
haying to be done on Cyril’s quarter; Angella’s fields 
had been overpastured, and she proposed to let them lie 
fallow for that year. The two girls put up seventy- 
five tons of hay. Angella w T as on the rake, an easy im¬ 
plement to ride, Nettie on the mower. Then Angella 
ascended the buck, and Nettie did the stacking, and as 
the big golden pile grew from day to day under their 
hands, their pride and satisfaction in their work was 
great. Angella felt that she had something to show 
for her work at last and pinned her faith upon a sure 
crop—the first since her arrival in Alberta. 

Before and after their field work, they had plenty of 


196 


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chores and housework to do. Nettie milked, looked 
after the sitting hens and spring chicks, and the great 
sow with her litter; she watered and fed the horses and 
cleaned the barns and stables. Meanwhile, Angella pre¬ 
pared the meals, made the butter, cleaned the house, and 
took full charge of the baby. 

In Nettie’s avoidance of her child there was fear 
rather than aversion. This child that had been forced 
upon her by the man she hated aroused strange tumults 
within her. At the thought of its father, she would 
shudder and tell herself she hated it because it was his; 
but there were moments when melting, passionate im¬ 
pulses consumed her, and then it took all her strength 
not to snatch her baby up and clasp it tightly to her 
breast. 

Throughout the long day she sat on the hard seat 
of the implement, rocked and shaken from side to side, 
as the four-horse plow broke up the rough land, and 
she tried hard to keep her mind upon her work. As 
her expert hand guided her horses, making a clean, 
workmanlike job of which not even a man could have 
been ashamed, she found a certain comfort in the 
thought that she was working for Cyril Stanley. Yet, 
as the implement swept on its circular path over the 


CATTLE 


197 


field, each time it passed near the box beside the straw 
stack where the baby slept, a sob of anguish would 
tear her heart anew. 

The harvest was close at hand, and for the first 
time since she had come to Alberta, Angella Loring was 
to have a crop. 

Billowing waves of golden wheat, going forty 
bushels or more to the acre, lay spread out before her, 
barley, glistening, and silvery, oats as tall as a man 
and thick and heavy, the grain, like living creatures, 
stirring and murmuring drowsily in the sunshine as the 
warm wind passed over it. 

“Come, we are waiting to be reaped,” it seemed to 
chant. “Gather us in, before the cold breath of the 
northland shall come shivering over the land, and freeze 
our strength with the touch of its icy finger.” 

Their labors over the two women who had put in the 
crop would walk slowly in the cool of the day through 
the grain, and the soft swishing of their skirts brushing 
a pathway through the thick grain sounded like a whis¬ 
per of peace in the quiet evening. The marvelous 
harvest moon hung like a great orange ball above the 
fields; the prairie land seemed to stretch inimitably into 
the distance; the far horizons disappeared into a chain 


198 


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of white hills, rising like a mist against the sky still 
resplendent with the incomparable prairie sunset. 

They talked little for the one was shy and reticent 
by nature, and in the other reticence and brevity of 
speech had become a habit. Yet each felt and under¬ 
stood the thought of the other, as they looked across 
at the moving grain, which was the visible sign of their 
long and arduous labor. 


CHAPTER XXI 


T HERE was hail in the south and further west; 

it zigzagged across the country, beating down 
the tall grain; the stones lay as big as eggs upon 
the ground, breaking windows and lashing in its vindic¬ 
tive fury whatever stood in its path. The grain shud¬ 
dered beneath the onslaught and bent to the ground. 
An angry black cloud overspread the sky like a gigan¬ 
tic hand from whose outstretched fingers the hail was 
falling. Not a stalk was left standing in the fields over 
which the storm passed, but its course was curiously 
eccentric. It ignored whole municipalities, and no one 
could tell where next it would choose to vent its wicked 
rage. Anxiously the girls had watched the path of the 
mad cloud, taking count of the destructive force that 
was wreaking such havoc upon the grain lands. Nettie 
prayed—prayed to the God of whom she knew so piti¬ 
fully little, but to whom Mrs. Langdon had been so near, 
and begged that their fields, Angela’s and Cyril’s, might 
be spared. 


200 


CATTLE 


The rural telephone wires were busy all that day and 
evening, with the calls of the excited farmers. 

“Were you struck?” 

“Yes, wiped out.” 

“Insured?” 

‘‘Not a red cent.” 

“Gosh, I’m sorry. There’s not a spear left in my 
fields neither, but I got ten dollars on the acre.” 

“Think they’ll allow you one hundred per cent, loss ?” 

“Sure they will.” 

“Hm! Betcha you’ll thresh just the same.” 

Then the bang of a hanging up receiver; but the 
ceaseless buzzing went on, with all the other parties 
on the main wire listening in, gloating or commiserat¬ 
ing over each others’ misfortunes. 

“How about Smither’s?” 

“Say, his fields aren’t touched.” 

“You don’t say. Isn’t it the devil how them hail 
storms skip and miss.” 

“Munsun’s got wiped off the map. So did Homan.” 

“Pederson’s ain’t touched even.” 

“Trust them Swedes to have the luck every time.” 

“Did you hear about Bar Q?” 

“No, what?” 


CATTLE 


201 


“Heard they got it hardest of all. My land! There 
isn’t a field the hail didn’t get. The whole three thou¬ 
sand acres on the grain ranch. I see where his nibs 
won’t do much threshing this year.” 

“He should worry. You can bet your bottom dollar 
he’s got double insurance on his crop, and, say, anyway, 
he’ll have a sight of green feed for his cattle. They 
say he’s short of hay in the hill country this year. 
I’ll bet he cuts the hailed stuff for feed.” 

“I wouldn’t wonder!” 

And so on. 

As it happened, Nettie and Angella’s crops were 
among the few that had escaped untouched. When 
the storm had passed and the sun blazed out again over 
the battered fields there, strong and sturdy, shining 
in the clear light, the grain they had sown seemed to 
smile at them and call aloud to be reaped without 
further delay. 

It was now mid-August, and the grain was ripe. 
Angella rode the binder, a picturesque implement with 
canvas wings, which when in operation resembles a sort 
of flying machine. Nettie followed on foot, stooking. 
This was a man’s job, for the sheaves of grain were 
heavy, and it was no easy matter to bend and grasp the 


202 


CATTLE 


thick bundles and stook them in stacks; but Nettie was 
strong and willing. She even tried to keep pace with 
the binder, by running to the stacks, until Angella 
brought up her horses sharply and refused to go on 
with the work, unless Nettie took her time about the 
stooking. 

The harvest occupied three long weeks, but the day 
came at last when the work was all completed. There 
was no longer any danger of frost, hail or drought. 
Nothing remained to be done but the threshing. Under 
the mellow evening light that suffuses the Alberta 
country at the harvest season, the girls, having gleaned 
bravely and well, rode in from their last day of harvest¬ 
ing. 

Sound carries far in the prairie country, and they 
could hear distinctly the buzz of the threshing machine 
eight miles away, droning like a comfortable bee, work¬ 
ing steadily through the night. In a few days, the 
threshers would “pull in” to Angella’s ranch and the 
harvested grain would be poured into the temporary 
granaries that they had constructed from a portion 
of the barn. 

As they stood together in the twilight, looking across 
at the harvest field, they felt, though they might not 


CATTLE 


203 


have been able to express their thoughts in words, that 
they had made of that land of theirs a picture no 
human brush could ever copy. And as this thought 
came simultaneously to their minds, their eyes met, and 
they smiled at each other like sisters. As they turned 
reluctantly from the contemplation of their master¬ 
piece, Nettie’s last glance toward the hills saw the 
figure of a rider silhouetted against the skyline. On 
his first appearance at the top of the grade, she did 
not recognize him, but as he approached, an uncon¬ 
trollable agitation shook her from head to foot. 

“Angel! Look—look—look—look—it’s—the Bull! 
Oh—h-” 

“You have nothing to fear, Nettie. Nettie!” 

“Oh, Angel, he’s come for me! I knowed he would! 
I’ve been lookin’ for him, dreadin’ it and now he’s 
here. Oh, what am I to do? Where can I hide?” 

As on the night when the Bull had trapped her in 
her room and she had listened paralyzed with fear to 
the breaking down of her door, her eyes darted wildly 
about for a means of escape. This time, instead of the 
narrow room, the whole of the far-flung prairie lay 
before her with the great grain stooks which she herself 
had piled together. She broke from Angella’s grasp, 



204 


CATTLE 


and fled across the field, and darting from one stack to 
another, crouched down in despair behind the farthest 
one. 

Angella made no movement to stop the fleeing girl. 
Her eyes narrowed slightly as she gazed keenly at the 
man to discover whether it was indeed Bull Langdon; 
then she turned and quietly went into her house. She 
put the child in its basket into the inner room, and took 
down her rifle; the rifle her neighbors in the early days 
had jeered at but learned to respect. Angella did not 
load it in the house, but slowly and calmly as Bull 
Langdon rode up she fitted the bullets in place. 


CHAPTER XXII 


I N a country like Alberta, especially in the ranch¬ 
ing sections, it is not difficult for a person to 
disappear, if he is so minded. 

Nettie had lived several months with Angella Loring 
before her presence there was discovered. On one side of 
Angella’s quarter was a municipality of open range, 
and on the other, Cyril Stanley’s quarter section. 
Beyond Cyril’s ranch was bush stretching for several 
miles to the Elbow River that intersected, south and 
north, the land towards the foothills fifty miles out 
of which was the Bar Q hill ranch. Beyond this dense 
timber land began, and in its very heart stood the Bow 
Claire Lumber Camp on the banks of the Ghost and 
Bow Rivers. Past the timber land the foothills still 
continued, growing higher and higher till they merged 
into the chain of Rocky Mountains. 

Gossip about Nettie Day had been confined to the 
foothill ranching country. Her story had run from 

ranch to ranch, and the general comment was ex- 
205 


206 


CATTLE 


pressed in the customary country phrases of: “I never 
would have believed it” or “I told you so.” But Nettie 
disappeared from the foothills, and curiosity, in a 
ranching country as has been said above, is short-lived. 
Besides, the death of Mrs. Langdon provided the ranch¬ 
ers with fresh excitement, and questions as to Nettie’s 
whereabouts were rarely heard. 

At this time new cares had begun to take possession 
of the country people of Alberta. Even as early as 
the spring, strange symptoms of unrest might have 
been observed, and here and there fear seemed to look 
out of the ranchers’ eyes. Strange stories were perco¬ 
lating into the ranches of sickness in the cities, a cer¬ 
tain sickness which the authorities purposely misnamed 
in order that the danger of panic might be averted. 
The ranch people stuck closely to their homes that 
spring and summer and were not cordial to strangers 
or of the usually welcome regular visitors from the 
city—the insurance and real estate men, the drug 
seller and the sly affable stranger who sold his Pain 
Killer to the hands with a wink. All these “paper-collar 
dudes” as the farmers called them, and the motor hoboes 
and camp-tramps, who stopped at the ranches to ask 
for anything from a measure of milk to a night’s lodg- 


CATTLE 


207 


ing, experienced that summer a cold reception, for the 
ranch people were shrewd enough to appreciate the 
fact that the plague might be carried to them through 
just such mediums as these. So they stuck close to 
home, and although the papers were filled with scare- 
head accounts of the fearful scourge in the east, 
Alberta believed or hoped it would prove immune. 

In Yankee Valley, no one knew that the girl from the 
I). T>. D. had returned, or that, with her child, she 
had found a refuge in the home of the Englishwoman 
who preferred to live like a hermit rather than accept 
the friendship of her neighbors. Angella’s land lay 
well back from the main road and trails and there 
Nettie had found a true sanctuary. One day, Batt 
Leeson, who had taken Cyril’s place at the Bull camp, 
was riding by Cyril’s quarter, en route to the foothills 
and paused at the sight of a girl in a man’s blue over¬ 
alls, driving a six-horse plow team over new breaking. 

Nettie, at a pause in the harvesting, while they were 
waiting for a field of oats to ripen, was filling in the 
time by breaking new land on Cyril’s quarter. 

Batt, gazing at her with his mouth open and his eyes 
blinking incredulously, could not believe it possible. 
To make doubly sure, he rode close to the fence line, 


208 


CATTLE 


and from behind the shelter of a tree, he waited for the 
plow to make its next round of the field. On and on it 
came, its dull rumble and clatter of iron the louder for 
the stillness of the prairie. Over a piece of rising 
ground came Nettie Day upon the implement. Her 
head was bare, and her hair shone red-gold in the sun¬ 
shine, seeming to radiate light like a halo. It had been 
cropped close as a boy’s, and the gentle wind lifted 
and blew it back from her flushed face as she drove. 

“Well, I’ll be switched!” said the ranch hand. 

He was, in fact, overjoyed at his discovery and would 
go back to the foothills with a rich morsel of news. He 
imagined himself saying, “What d’you think? That 
there girl that got into trouble at Bar Q is workin’ on 
the land of the fellow that—” Once Cyril Stanley had 
punched his face for a much slighter offense than men¬ 
tioning his (Cyril’s) name in connection with a girl, 
and Batt bit his tongue upon the name of the man he 
suspected as the cause of Nettie Day’s downfall. 

Chuckling with satisfaction, he followed the girl 
with his gloating eyes, but she was looking straight 
ahead and never turned her head to where the rider 
watched her from the trail. 


CATTLE 


209 


Things had been going from bad to worse at Bar Q. 
More than the usual number of calves had died from 
blackleg, and a number of first-class heifers had perished 
in the woods where the larkspur poison weed grew wild. 
A Government veterinary surgeon, after a hurried sur¬ 
vey of the animals on the home range, had put a blan¬ 
ket quarantine on all the cattle, which prevented their 
removal for months—in fact, until the “vet” gave them 
a clean bill of health. 

The cowman’s stock and ranch had been badly neg¬ 
lected in his absence. His cattle had been allowed to 
go at large; the fences were out of repair and the 
customary careful segregation of each different grade 
was a thing of the past. He found the whole ranch at 
sixes and sevens, and raged at the foremen for their 
neglect, swearing that not “a stitch of work” had been 
done all the time he had been away. He celebrated his 
return by “firing” all hands at the foothill ranch, and 
the new outfit who took their places proved worse than 
the old. Their term at the ranch was soon over, and 
the constant changing of hands that now began had an 
exceedingly bad effect upon the place. Good help was 
very scarce at that time, and wages had been as high 


210 


CATTLE 


as one hundred dollars a month with board, so Bull 
Langdon had his hands full at Bar Q. 

He went about in a state of chronic evil humor in 
these days, and found nothing about the place to suit 
him. Without his wife, the big ranch house got upon 
his nerves, for with the genius of the born home-maker 
she had created an atmosphere of comfort and peace 
that had made it impressive even on her husband’s 
insensitive mind. She had catered to his appetite and 
his whims, and he had become used to having a woman’s 
tender care about him; indeed, he had grown to depend 
upon the very services he had so roughly rewarded in 
the past. He could neither accustom himself to the 
empty house nor endure the meals at the cook car. 

In these days he slept on the ground floor of the 
house, in the dining room. During his wife’s lifetime 
the room had shone with orderliness and cleanliness; 
now boots, rough coats and trousers, shirts, and the 
cattlemen’s riding accessories were strewn all over it, 
while the unmade bed, the unwashed pots and pans, the 
traces of muddy boots upon the floor, and the dust of 
weeks had turned it into a place of indescribable dirt and 
confusion. 

The Bull had refused to sleep upstairs since his wife’s 


CATTLE 


211 


death; her bedroom door remained closed. Nettie’s, 
too, still hung on its broken hinges, and sometimes on 
a windy night the knocking of that broken door, 
screeching and swinging upon its single hinge, was more 
than the overwrought cattleman could stand, and he 
would tramp out to the bunkhouse, and sleep there 
instead. He felt the need of his home more and more, 
however, and like a spoiled child whose favorite toy had 
been taken from him, he fumed and stormed at the 
ill-luck that had robbed him. 

One day he returned to the house after a hard day’s 
riding, and the sight of its grime and disorder set a 
spark to his already smoldering rage. His thoughts 
turned, as always at such moments, to the girl whose 
place he honestly believed was there in his house where 
he had intended to install her. She had been gone long 
enough. He had put up with enough of her damned 
nonsense now, and it was time to round her up. He 
regarded Nettie as a stray head of stock, that had 
slipped from under the lariat noose, and was wandering 
in strange pastures. True, she was a prized head, but 
that only strengthened the Bull’s determination to cap¬ 
ture her. He considered her his personal stuff; some¬ 
thing he had branded, and he was not the man to part 


212 


CATTLE 


with anything that belonged to him, as doggedly and 
repeatedly he assured himself she did, having been 
bought with the rest of her dad’s old truck. 

Batt Leeson riding in from Barstairs brought him 
the first news of the girl that he had had since the 
night she had fled in terror from his house. 

“Say, boss, who d’you suppose I seen when I rode 
by Yankee Valley?” 

“How the h-should I know?” 

“Well, I seen that Day girl that used to work up 
here.” 

Bull Langdon, busy making of a bull-whip, twisting 
long strips of cowhide about a lump of lead, stopped 
short in his work, and looked up sharply at the slowly 
chewing, slowly talking ranch hand. 

“What’s that you say?” 

“I was sayin’ that I seen her—Nettie Day—over to 
Yankee Valley, and where d’you suppose she’s living? 
Say, she must be tied up now to that Stanley fellow, 
because I seen her on his land and-” 

“That’s a damned lie!” shouted the cattleman, and 
dashed the loaded cowhide to the floor with a foul oath. 
Batt, his knees shaking with terror, retreated before 
the advance of the enraged cowman. 




CATTLE 


213 


“It’s true as God what I’m telling you. I seen her 
with my own eyes. She was breakin’ land on Stanley’s 
quarter.” 

Bull Langdon’s eyes were bloodshot and his face 
twitched hideously. 

“That young scrub’s at Bow Claire. His homestead’s 
burned to the ground. You can’t come to me with no 
such tale as that.” 

“B—b-b-b—but I tell you she’s workin’ his land. I 
seen her. I stopped right close and looked her over to 
make sure. I ain’t makin’ no mistake. Thought at first 
I might be, cause I figure that a girl in her condition 
wouldn’t be-” 

“What-cha mean by her condition?” 

“Sa-ay boss.” Batt scratched his head, uncertain 
whether to proceed; itching to tell the tale of the girl’s 
fall, but fearing the menacing spark in the cattleman’s 
eyes. “I thought you knew.” 

“Knew what?” 

“ ’Bout her condition.” 

Batt essayed a sly, ingratiating wink, but it had no 
placating effect upon the man before him. 

“I don’t know what the devil you’re talking about.” 

“Gosh, boss, everyone knows ’bout Nettie Day. She's 



214 


CATTLE 


agoin’ to have a baby—mebbe she’s got it now. I ex¬ 
pect she has.” 

“What-t!” 

The Bull’s eyes bulged; a tidal wave of unholy joy 
threatened to overwhelm him. 

A baby! His ! His! His own! His and that gell’s! 

He threw back his head and burst into a storm of 
laughter. His wild mirth shook the beams and rafters 
of the old room, and seemed to reverberate all through 
the great house. 

“Well, by G-!” said the cowman and reached for 

his riding boots. He pulled them savagely on, still 
chuckling and chortling, and pausing ever and anon to 
smack his hip. 

“Goin’ riding, boss?” 

“You betcher life I am.” 

“Where you goin’P” 

“I’m going to a round up,” said Bull Langdon, 
clicking his lips. 

“After some loose stock?” 

“A purebred heifer with a calf at heel,” said Bull 
Langdon. “They’ve got my brand upon them.” 



CHAPTER XXIII 


T HE Englishwoman stood in the doorway of her 
shack, rifle in hand, and gazed calmly at the 
blustering cowman, who had dismounted, and, fists on 
hips, was standing before her. For the first time 
in his life Bull Langdon found himself face to face with 
a woman who was not afraid of him. Her cold, unwav¬ 
ering glance traveled over him, from his flat head down 
to his great, coarse feet, and back with cool dis¬ 
paragement straight into his flinching eyes. 

‘‘You seen anything of that gell, Nettie Day?” 
Angella disdained to answer. She was looking over 
his head, and presently she said: 

“Will you kindly remove yourself from my place? I 
don’t want you here.” 

“You don’t, heh? Well, I’m here to get something 

of my own, do you get me?” 

“Oh, yes, I get you all right; but you’ll take nothing 

off my place, you may be sure of that.” 

He stood his ground with bravado, and blurted out 

his errand; he had come for Nettie, and intended to 
215 


216 


CATTLE 


have her and his kid. She belonged to him; was his 
“gell,” and he had bought her along with her “dad’s 
old truck.” He’d have been over sooner, but his cattle 
had tied him down since his return from the States, 
and he “wan’t the kind o’ man to neglect his cattle 
for a woman.” 

As he spoke, Angella’s level gaze rested coolly upon 
him, and met his blustering outburst with a half-smile 
of detached and amused contempt. But when he made 
a movement as if to enter the house, Angella Loring 
slowly brought her rifle to her shoulder, and aimed 
straight at him. With the practiced eye of a dead shot, 
she squinted down the length of the barrel, and the 
Bull sprang back, when he saw her finger crooked upon 
the trigger. 

“What the h— you tryin’ to do?” 

She answered without lowering the gun or moving 
her finger. 

“You clear off my place! If you attempt to enter 
my house I’ll shoot you down with less compunction 
than I would a dog.” 

He slouched a few paces farther back, and an evil 
laugh broke from his lips. Once he had reached his 
horse’s side, his bravado returned. 


CATTLE 


217 


“Guess there ain’t goin’ to be no trouble gettin’ 
what’s my own. The law’s on my side. I’ve got as 
much right to that kid, that’s my own stuff, as the 
gell has.” 

“Oh, have you?” said Angella coolly. “Unfortu¬ 
nately for you, the child is no longer even Nettie’s. It’s 
mine. She gave me her child for adoption.” 

“She hadn’t no right to do that,” said the Bull in 
a sudden access of rage. “It ain’t hers to give away.” 

“Oh, isn’t it, though?” 

“No, it ain’t, and I’ll show you a thing o’ two. There 
won’t be no funny business with guns neither when a 
couple of mounties come up here after what’s mine.” 

“I wouldn’t talk about the law if I were you. You 
see, when you committed that crime against Nettie, she 
happened to be a minor. I don’t know just how many 
years in the penitentiary that may mean for you. 
Her lawyers will know.” 

At the word “penitentiary,” his face had turned gray. 
Nettie’s youth had never occurred to him before, nor 
what it might mean for him. 

“Besides,” went on the Englishwoman, “apart from 
the legal aspects of the case, I wonder that you take 
a chance in a country like this. Consider what is likely 


218 


CATTLE 


to happen to you, if the truth about Nettie becomes 
known in this ranching country. We have an unwritten 
law of our own in such cases, you know, and everybody 
has been blaming an innocent boy. What will they say 
—what will they do, when they know that the most 
detested and hated man in the country attacked 
young, defenseless girl when she was alone in his house? 
I wouldn’t care to be in your shoes when that fact leaks 
out, as you may be sure it will. I’ll take care of that! 
You can trust me to denounce you without reserve !” 

The Bull shouted, purple with rage: 

“There ain’t no man livin’ Fm afraid of, and there 
ain’t no man in the country strong enough to lay a 
finger on me, see. I could beat every son of a gun in 
Alberta to a pulp.” 

“I don’t doubt that. You look as if you might have 
the strength of a gorilla; but then where a hand will 
not serve a rope will, and you know it will be short work 
for your own men to hang you to a tree when young 
Cyril Stanley ropes you. Now I’ve talked to you 
enough. You get off my place, or I’ll put a shot in 
that ugly fist of yours that’ll lame you for the rest of 
your days.” 

He had remounted and she laughed at his haste; yet 


CATTLE 219 

as he rode off, the venomous expression on his face 
turned her heart cold with a new fear, and her ears 
rang ominously with his parting words. 

“So long, old hen, you’ll sing another tune when we 
meet again.” 


CHAPTER XXIV 


i( T AKE, I want you to ride like ‘hell on fire’ to 
Springbank, where you’ll find Dr. McDermott. 

Ask at the post office for him, and you may meet 
him on the trail. Don’t spare Daisy, even if you 
have to kill her riding. Leave her at Springbank to 
rest up, and come back with the Doc. And Jake, if 
you get back by tomorrow night, I’ll—I’ll give you a 
whole pound of brown sugar and a can of molasses. 
Now skedaddle, and for God’s sake, don’t fail us.” 

“Me go! Me fly on the air!” cried the breed ex¬ 
citedly. Without saddle or bridle—nothing but a 
halter rope, Jake was on the Indian broncho, and was 
off like a flash over the trail. 

Angella concealed her fears from the white and 
trembling Nettie. 

“Nothing to worry about,” she said carelessly. “He’s 
afraid of my gun, Nettie, the big coward!” 

“Oh, Angel, I’m not afraid for myself, but for the 
220 


CATTLE 


221 


baby. He’s a terrible man when he’s in a passion, and 
he never gives up nothing that’s his.” 

“But you’re not his,” said Angel sharply, “and 
neither is the baby. He’s mine. You said I could have 
him, and I won’t give him up.” 

“Oh, Angel, I don’t want you to. He’s better with 
you than anyone else, and although I do love him—” 
Nettie’s voice was breaking piteously—“yet there are 
times when I can’t forget that he’s the Bull’s-” 

“He’s not. He’s all yours, Nettie. There’s not a 
trace of that wild brute in our baby. I don’t see how 
you can even think it. Just look at the darling,” and 
she held up the laughing, fair-haired baby at arm’s 
length. The days spent out of doors in the field had 
done much to give him the health and strength that had 
not been his at birth. He had Nettie’s eyes and hair, 
but not her seriousness, for he crowed and laughed all 
day long, the happiest and most contented baby in the 
world. 

Nettie looked at him now with swimming eyes. 

“He is sweet!” she said in a choking voice, and kneel¬ 
ing beside Angella, on whose lap the baby lay, she buried 
her head in his little soft body. 

Jake did not return the following night, nor the 



222 


CATTLE 


night after. Though each sought to hide her anxiety 
from the other, the two women kept a constant look-out 
along the trail, straining their ears for the comforting 
sound of the motor, which on a still day could sometimes 
be heard at two or even three miles* distance. 

They would have gone away somewhere, but for the 
fact that the threshers were due in a few days* time, and 
it would have meant ruin to leave the crop unthreshed. 
Once the threshing was done, and the grain safely 
stored in the granary, or sold direct to the commission 
men who had already called upon Angella, they would 
be free to make a trip to Calgary, and there seek coun¬ 
sel and protection. 

Meanwhile, every night they bolted and barricaded 
their door, and with the baby between them, with 
loaded guns side by side on the bed, hardly slept 
through the night. Wide-eyed and silent in the dark¬ 
ness they kept their vigil, each hoping that the other 
slept. 

On the third night, toward morning, Nettie started 
up with a cry. She had heard something moving out¬ 
side the shack. They gripped their rifles and sat up 
listening intently. Then Angella declared that it was 
only the wind, and Nettie said: 


CATTLE 


223 


“It sounds like thunder, doesn’t it? Maybe we’re 
goin’ to have another storm.” 

“Let it storm,” said Angella, glad of the other’s 
voice in the darkness. “Our crop’s harvested, and no 
hail can hurt us now. Is the light still going in the 
kitchen?” 

“Yes.” After a moment, Nettie said: 

“I ain’t afraid of nothing now for myself, but I 
don’t want nothing to happen to you—and my baby.” 

“My baby you mean,” corrected Angella, pretending 
to laugh. But with all the tenderness of her maternal 
heart, she drew the baby close to her side. 

After another long tense pause, when they again 
imagined things stirring about the place, Angella said 
suddenly: 

“Let’s talk. I can’t sleep and neither can you, and 
we never do talk much.” 

“I expect that’s because we’ve always had to work 
most o’ the time,” said Nettie. “Isn’t it queer that you 
and me should be such friends.” 

“Why queer?” 

“I’m what they call ‘scrub’ stock—and you-” 

“So’m I—scrub. That’s the kind worth being. The 



224 


CATTLE 


common clay, Nettie. The other kind is shoddy and 
false and-” 

“Oh, Angel, I think you’re so sweet and good.” 

“I’m not sweet and good,” said Angella stoutly, 
“and there’s nothing heroic about me.” 

“I don’t care what you are,” said Nettie, “I’ll always 
love you. Sometimes when I get thinkin’ of how hard 
everything’s been for me in this life, I think of you 
and Mrs. Langdon, and I say to myself: You’re a 
lucky girl, Nettie. Not everybody in the world has got 
a friend! Have they, Angel?” 

“No—very few of us have,” said Angella sadly. 
“Nettie, did you hear that!” 

“What?” 

“It sounded like—like a moan. Listen!” 

In the dark silence of the night, the long-drawn moan¬ 
ing sound was repeated. 

“It’s cattle,” said Nettie. 

“Are you sure?” 

“Oh, yes, I know their calls, though I didn’t know 
there was any near us.” 

“Passing along the trail probably. It’s getting 
toward the fall, you know.” 

“Angel, do you believe in God?” 



CATTLE 


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“No—that is, yes—in a way I do. Do you?” 

“Yes. Mrs. Langdon used to say that God was in 
us—in our hearts. He can’t be in every heart, can 
he?” 

“Why not?” 

“Well, Bull Langdon’s for instance. God ccnddn't 
abide in his heart, could he?” 

“No, I should think not.” 

“But Mrs. Langdon believed it. She used to say 
that God loved him as well as any of us, but that Bull 
was ‘in error,’ and that some day God would open his 
eyes, and then he would be powerful good.” 

“Hm! He’d have to open his eyes pretty wide, I’m 
thinking,” said Angel. “But try and sleep now, Nettie. 
I’m feeling a bit drowsy myself. Maybe we can snatch 
a wink or two before morning. Good-night, Nettie.” 

“Good-night, Angel. I think it’s true. God is in 
our hearts. I believe it.” 

“I believe he’s in yours, anyway,” said Angella softly. 
“Good-night, old girl.” 

But God dwelt not in the heart of Bull Langdon 
Under the silver light of the moon, that lay like a spell 
upon the sleeping land, and across the shining valley, 
came the cowman, driving a great herd of steers. 


226 


CATTLE 


Penned in corrals for shipment to the Calgary stock- 
yards, they had been without food for two days, and 
now they came down the hill, eager and impatient for 
the feed that had been too long denied them. 

The Bull, on his huge bay mare, drove them rapidly 
before him whirling and cracking his long whip over 
their heads. The Banff highway was deserted. He 
chose the gritty roads, and, heads down, the hungry 
steers nosed the bare ground, till they came to the level 
lands, and turned into the road allowances between the 
farms. The grain fields, odorous of cut hay and grain, 
inflamed the hunger-maddened steers, and they moaned 
and sniffed as they were driven mercilessly along. 

All day and most of the night they traveled without 
pause and in the first gray of the dawn they arrived 
at the frail fences of the Lady Angella Loring. Down 
went the two insecure lines of barbed wire that the 
women had set up, never counting they would be needed 
to withstand the impetuous stampede of wild cattle. 

When Angella and Nettie stepped out of their shack 
later that morning their shocked eyes were greeted with 
Bull Langdon’s vindictive work. The road was still 
gray with the raised dust of the departing animals 
turning off the road allowance for the main trail, the 


CATTLE 


227 


Bar Q brand showing clearly on their left ribs. Filled 
to the neck with the reaped grain, they were rolling 
heavily along the way into Calgary. 

The two girls stood before their barren fields, over¬ 
whelmed by the magnitude of the disaster that had 
befallen them. Not a word was said, but Angella, as if 
grown suddenly old, turned blindly to the house, while 
Nettie threw herself down desperately upon the ground 
and burst into bitter tears. 

Her little work-roughened hands fallen loosely by 
her side, Angella sat at the crude wooden table of her 
own making, and tried to figure a way out of the 
appalling problem now facing her. She had bought 
her implements on the installment plan, and the money 
was now due; she owed the municipality for her seed; a 
chattel mortgage was on her stock. That year’s crop 
would have wiped out all her indebtedness, and left her 
free and clear. 

When her crops had failed before, she had made up 
her losses by working at the Bar Q, and the small pro¬ 
ceeds of the sale of eggs and butter; but now she had 
not only herself to consider. There were two other 
living creatures entirely dependent upon her. To the 


228 


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desolate, heart-starved woman, Nettie and her baby had 
become nearer and dearer to her than her own kin. 

Nettie, still lying on the bitten down stubble, was 
roused from her stupor of grief by a pulling at her 
sleeve, and looking up, she saw the half-breed Jake. He 
was kneeling beside her, holding out a little bunch of 
buttercups, and in the poor fellow’s face she read his 
grief and anxiety. Nettie tried to smile through her 
tears, and she took the flowers gratefully. 

“Thank you, Jake. Where’d you come from?” she 
asked, wiping her eyes, though her breath still came in 
gasping sobs, and she could not hide her tears. 

“Jake come out like ‘Hell on fire’ in Doctor’s noter- 
mobile. Beeg, beeg ride—run like w r ind—run like hell 
on road. Doc”—he jerked his thumb back—“go into 
house. He eat foods. Jake got a hongry inside too. 
She tell Jake she give’m molasses and sugar.” He 
smacked his lips at thought of his favorite food, but the 
next moment he was studying Nettie’s wet face in 
troubled bewilderment. 

“What’s matter, Nettie? Him hurt Nettie yes 
again?” 

“Oh, yes, Jake, again.” Her lip quivered. 

The half-breed’s face flamed savagely. 


CATTLE 


229 


“The Bull! He no good! Jake kill ’im some day 
sure.” 

He waved his arms wildly, and Nettie shook her head, 
smiling at him sadly. 

“Keep away from him, Jake. He’s powerful strong, 
and there wouldn’t be nothing much left of you if he 
once got his hands on you.” 

“Jake not afraid of the Bull,” said the half-breed, 
shaking his head. “Listen, Nettie. Me—Jake Lang- 
don—me take a peech fork, beeg long likea this, and 
me jab him in the eye of the Bull, yes? That’s kill 
him.” 

“Oh, no, Jake. He’d get it from you. He’d r as tie 
it out of your hands.” 

“Then me—Jake steal on house when he’s sleep. Get 
a long big nail—like this big—hammer him into ear. 
That same way many Indian do.” 

“Keep away from him, Jake. You’ll only get the 
worst of it.” 

“Jake don’t mind worst. That’s nothing. Jake no 
like see cry on Nettie.” 

“Well, then, I’ll not cry any more. You pick me 
some more buttercups, Jake, and—and don’t you worry 


about me. Vm all right.” 


230 


CATTLE 


Inside the shack, Dr. McDermott had broken his 
habitual Scotch reticence and blazed into fluent fury. 
He had met the Bar Q herd along the road, and had 
suspected something wrong. As he drove by Angella’s 
fields he realized what had happened, and her first words 
confirmed his suspicions. 

“Bull Langdon turned his steers into my crop. He 
has ruined us.” 

“The hound! The dirty, cowardly hound! I’ll have 
him jailed for this.” 

“You can’t, doctor,” said Angella wearily, “we didn’t 
have the legal fence—just two wires. You warned us. 
I wish I had taken your advice.” 

“Then I’ll beat him to a pulp, with my own hands!” 
said the enraged doctor. 

Angella looked up at him with a pitying smile. 

“No, man, you shan’t do that. I wouldn’t have you 
soil your hands touching him.” 

Her head dropped, and for a long time no word was 
spoken in the little shack. Dr. McDermott, tongue-tied, 
stared down at the bowed head of Angella. Presently 
she said, without looking up, but in a sort of hopeless, 
dead way: 


CATTLE 


231 


“Dr. McDermott, I’m through. I can’t go on fight¬ 
ing. I’m beat.” 

“Through!” roared her friend, who had once 
preached so violently against her laboring as a man, 
“lass, you’ve only begun! You’re of a fighting race—a 
grand race, and you’ll go down fighting. You’re not 
of the breed to admit you’re beat.” 

“Little you know of my breed,” she said sadly. 

Dr. McDermott took the chair opposite her, thrust 
out his chin and forced her to look at him. 

“Do you remember the stable lad ye whipped because 
he’d not let you ride the young Spitfire?” he said. 
“Don’t you remember the lad that twenty-five years 
ago your father sent away to college in Glasgow?” 

Her eyes grew wide and bright as she stared at him 
as though she saw him for the first time. Color touched 
her cheeks, she looked like a girl again. For a moment 
she could not speak, but only stare at him. Out of the 
mists of memory she was seeing again the barefooted 
boy she had stolen away many a time to play with; it 
was incredible that he and this rugged Scotch doctor, 
who had forced his friendship upon her out in the wilds 
of Canada, should be one and the same. 

“Are you really that boy?” 


232 


CATTLE 


And then, with a catch in her voice: 

“Why, I must have been blind.” A little sob of 
delight at this miraculous encounter rose in her throat. 

“Then you are—Angus. That was your name, 
wasn’t it. Oh, I have been blind!” 

“Twenty-five years is a long time, my lady.” 

“Don’t call me, my lady. I hate it.” 

“I’m glad of that, ma’am,” said the doctor solemnly, 
which made her laugh. 

“And now,” he pleaded, roughly, though in desper¬ 
ate earnest, “you’ll be taking back the money that your 
father spent to make a doctor of a stable lad, will you 
not? You’ll let me stake you, lass?” 

“Oh, you’ve more than paid that debt. This ranch 
alone-” 

“It’s a homestead—a free gift of the Canadian Gov¬ 
ernment. It’ll not begin to pay for the cost of a mon’s 
education. A debt’s a debt, and I trust you’ll allow 
a mon to wipe out a heavy obligation.” 

At that Angella smiled, but her eyes were wet. 

“If you put it that way, Dr. McDermott, of course, 
there’s nothing else for me to do but let you—let you— 
stake me—will you?” 

“I will!” said the man, scowling at her angrily, then 



CATTLE 


233 


he cleared his throat, and asked for a “bite of food for 
a hungry mon who’s been working day and night to 
hammer a bit of common sense into a bunch of farmers 
whose heads are made of wood.” 

Angella even laughed as she bustled about the kitchen, 
preparing a quick meal for the doctor, and when she 
set it before him she asked: 

“Who’s sick now, doctor?” 

“The whole country’s nigh down,” he muttered. “If 
they don’t heed the warning I’ve been trying to hammer 
into their systems for months now, there’ll be a sad lot 
of sick and dead folk before the winter’s out, I tell 
you.” 

“As bad as all that?” 

He replied solemnly: 

“Couldn’t be worse. Mark my words, if the plague 
comes up to the country from Calgary, where it’s got 
a foothold already, our population will be cut in half.” 


CHAPTER XXV 


lE a thief in the night the plague crept into 



J|_ J Alberta, disguised at first in the form of light 

colds to which the sufferers paid small attention, 
but before the year was out those neglected colds had 
turned into the scourge whose virulence singled out the 
strong, the fair and the young for its victims. 

Calgary was like a beleaguered city at bay against 
the attack of a dread enemy. The printed warnings 
everywhere in the newspapers and placarded in public 
places and street cars; the newspaper accounts of the 
progress of the sickness in Europe, the United States 
and eastern Canada, with the long list of deaths threw 
the healthy city of the foothills into a state of panic. 

Schools were closed; the people were afraid to go to 
church; disinfectant was sprayed over every store and 
office. The faintest symptom of a cold, the least sneeze 
was diagnosed as plague, and the growing fear in which 
the people awaited the disaster created a hysterical 
condition that probably precipitated its coming. 
Slowly and surely, undeterred by precaution and prayer 


234 


CATTLE 


235 


alike, the terrible plague was drawing in upon Alberta. 

The first definitely diagnosed cases came in early 
summer, when the weather is raw and cold as it always 
is there. At that early season only two or three cases 
were discovered, but all the members of medical and 
nursing professions volunteered or were conscripted 
for service. By a curious negligence, no means of pro¬ 
tection were taken for the vast country that surrounded 
the City of the Foothills on every side, and it was even 
said that many cases that the authorities failed to 
report had been sent off “to the country.” 

If the city authorities were indifferent to the fate 
of the country regions, on which, by the way Calgary 
was wholly dependent, there was one man at least who 
kept the welfare of his beloved country close to his 
heart. The erstwhile Scotch stable lad, who for many 
years had dedicated his thought, his labor and his heart 
to the farming and ranching people of Alberta, be¬ 
grudged himself even a few hours sleep. Night and 
day, he “kept the road,” keeping the keenest watch 
for the first outbreak of the epidemic, well knowing that 
plague respected neither person nor place, but leaped 
across the great cities even to the remotest places of 
the earth. 


236 


CATTLE 


The warm summer brought an abatement of the 
menace, but when the first frost came in with the fall, 
the plague fell like a cloudburst upon the country. 

Calgary, the city of sunlight and optimism, became a 
place of suffering and death. Scarcely a house but the 
dreaded visitor entered to take his tragic and inexplic¬ 
able toll of the youngest and strongest there. People 
went about half-dazed, as if they were living in a night¬ 
mare. Hospitals, schools, churches, theaters, every 
available public building was turned into a house of 
refuge. No one was allowed on the street without a 
mask of white gauze fastened over nose and mouth. 

The terrible crisis brought to light the extreme 
scarcity of nurses and doctors. Although an army of 
volunteer nurses were recruited by the city authorities, 
they were inadequate to the needs of all those stricken 
households, where one after another died for sheer lack 
of care and attention. The hospitals and all the emer¬ 
gency stations were filled to overflowing. 

In spite of the almost superhuman expenditure of 
effort, the death lists grew from day to day. Crepe 
hung from every second door in the city, and every day 
a ghastly procession of hearses, automobiles, and every 


CATTLE 


237 


vehicle that moved on wheels, passed through the streets 
laden with Calgary’s dead. 

All the surrounding towns had succumbed meanwhile, 
and the smaller the towns, the heavier was the mor¬ 
tality for lack of skilled doctors and nurses and fit 
accommodation for the patients. 

Most desperate of all, however, was the plight of 
those who lived on farms and ranches and at camps be¬ 
yond the reach of help. The state of things in the 
Indian Reserves was appalling. The Indians were dying 
like flies, their misery forgotten by their white pro¬ 
tectors. In their ignorance and helplessness, they 
sought help at the farms and ranches, only to be turned 
away, and often they carried the plague into places 
which had been immune until then. 

Half the countryside was down with the disease, and 
still Dr. McDermott was vainly applying to the city 
and provincial authorities for help. Seeing that his 
demands were falling on deaf ears, he tried to impress 
into service men and women ranchers whose families 
had not yet been attacked, trying to make them under¬ 
stand that at sucn a time it was everybody’s duty to 
do what he could. But the fear that had paralyzed 
the cities had now reached the farmers, and the doctor’s 


238 


CATTLE 


appeal brought little response. In their desire to 
escape, many families shut themselves up in their homes, 
discharged their help and hung signs on their gates: 
“Keep away!” They closed their doors in the faces of 
friends and strangers both, and only opened them when 
they in their turn were forced to cry for help. A few 
did respond, it is true, to the doctor’s call for help, 
but nearly always were themselves overtaken before 
they had served very long, and the demand for help 
of any kind was so overwhelming that it was well-nigh 
impossible to do more than show the sick how to take 
care of themselves. 

Overworked and exhausted, worn out with lack of 
sleep, Dr. McDermott stopped one day at Angella 
Loring’s ranch. 

The two girls were coming in from the field, Angella 
in the democrat with the baby, and Nettie on foot, 
driving home a team of work horses. They had been 
plowing and repairing the broken fences, for undaunted 
by the destruction of their crop, they were pluckily 
on the land again, preparing for the next year’s seeding. 

Dr. McDermott, his bag on the step by him, watched 
them as they watered and fed their horses and put up 
for the night. Then, each taking a handle of the baby’s 


CATTLE 


239 


basket, they came through the barnyard to the house. 

For the first time since she had known her doctor 
friend, he failed to greet Nettie with his cheery: 

“And how’s my lass today?” 

Gaunt and haggard, he stood up and scrutinized 
them gravely before grunting: 

“Hm! All right, eh? Not touched. Well, sit down, 
girls. I’ve thot to tell you will make your hearts a wee 
bit heavy.” 

Dr. McDermott opened his black bag and took out 
some pills and a large bottle of disinfectant, which he 
set on the steps. Angella, the baby in her arms, her 
brows slightly drawn, looked down at the lined face of 
the doctor, and saw he had brought bad news. 

“Let’s go in,” she said. “You look as if a cup of 
tea won’t come amiss. Let me pass. I’ll make it at 
once.” 

“You’ll hear me through first, and I’ve no time for 
tea. There’s a bit of sickness running about the coun¬ 
try. ’Tis the same they’ve had in the old land. You’ll 
put this disinfectant about your place, and on your 
person, and in case—in case of certain symptoms, 
you’ll go straight to bed, and you’ll stay there till I 
tell you when to get up, and you’ll begin then to take 


240 


CATTLE 


the pills I’m leaving. What’s more, you’ll send Jake 
at once for me.” 

There was a pause, as Nettie’s eyes met Angella’s. 

“Needn’t worry about me, doc,” said Nettie. “I’m 
awfully healthy. You don’t have to give me no pills.” 

The doctor glared at her furiously. 

“That’s the ignorant sort of talk I’ve been listening 
to all summer; but the very ones who boasted of their 
strength are the ones stricken.” 

“What are the symptoms?” interposed Angella. 

“Symptoms? Fever, backache, headache, nose bleed, 
a tendency to sneeze, hot and cold flashes.” 

Angella’s face paled, and her glance went furtively 
from Nettie to the baby. 

“Are there many down?” she questioned with assumed 
casualness. 

“Thousands, ma’am, in the city, and God knows how 
many in the country.” 

“What are they doing for help?” 

“In the country they are doing without it—shifting 
for themselves.” 

Angella looked startled, and Nettie turned round, her 
slow gaze fixed upon the doctor’s face. 

“Who’s taking care of them, then?” she asked. 


CATTLE 


241 


“They’re takin’ care of themselves. They creep out 
of bed and crawl to each other, and some of ’em die 
before they can get back to their own beds. In most 
of the families that have it, they are all down at once.” 

“Now, look here,” said Angella abruptly, “you’ve got 
to have some supper before you start off.” 

“No time for supper. There’s nine in the Homan 
family down, including the help. I’m on my way now.” 

He had snapped his bag closed. Nettie passed by 
him into the house. Angella paused at the door and 
caught him by the sleeve to detain him. 

“Really, doctor, it won’t do you a bit of good to try 
and take care of people if you don’t take care of your¬ 
self first; you’ve got to eat. So you come right in. 
It won’t take me a minute to fix something for you.” 

“No, can’t stop. I had a bite at noon, and will reach 
Homan’s in time for another sup.” 

“Well, wait. A minute or two more or less won’t 
matter. I want to know about this. Can’t you get 
nurses from Calgary, and aren’t there any other doc¬ 
tors in the country?” 

“There are three besides myself over my territory, 
but two of ’em’s down, and the other—” The doctor 


242 


CATTLE 


scowled and muttered something about “white-livered 
coward.” 

“And nurses?” 

“I tell you I’ve been unable to get anyone . The city 
nurses have their hands full in town, and they won’t 
come up to the country. As for the women themselves 
—the farm women, those who are not down, have gone 
plumb crazy with fright. I’ve gone from ranch to ranch 
like a beggar, imploring help.” 

Nettie had come out again. She had changed from 
her overalls to the blue house dress that Mrs. Langdon 
had made for her and over this she had thrown a plaid 
shawl. The blue woolen tarn that Angella had knitted 
for her was on her head, and she looked singularly 
young and sweet. A few articles of clothing were 
knotted in a neat bundle under her arm. 

“Doc,” she said, “I’m going with you.” 

There was a long pause. Dr. McDermott blinked 
up at her, scowled, grunted something under his breath, 
and cleared his throat loudly. Angella stood stiffly by 
the door, not attempting to move, and her arm tight¬ 
ened involuntarily about the baby. 

“I’m awfully strong,” went on Nettie, “and I ain’t 
likely to ketch nothing, and it don’t matter if I do, far 


CATTLE 


243 


as that goes. It’s up to me to help those that need me. 
You’ll let me go, won’t you, doc?” 

“You’re a good lass,” muttered the doctor, “and 
you’ll be a grand help to me.” 

At last Angella found her voice. 

“Nettie, you’re forgetting your—baby!” she said. 

Nettie turned sharply round and the bundle fell from 
her hand. 

“No, no, Angel, I’ve not forgotten him; but you’ll 
be good to him, won’t you? and he’ll never miss me.” 

“Nettie Day, don’t dare talk like that,” said Angella 
savagely. “I won’t let you go if you have any thought 
like that in your head.” 

But Nettie did not hear her. For the first time since 
her baby’s birth she was holding it in her arms, and the 
feel of the little warm face against her own brought 
a pang to her heart that was both agony and joy. 
Motherhood seemed to have come to her in a sudden 
rush of feeling, and her face was as white as death when 
she at last gave her child back solemnly to Angel. The 
movement awakened the baby, and now its cry was more 
than she could bear. She clasped her hands over her 
ears, and rushed to the gate. Dr. McDermott picked 
up her bundle and followed* 


CHAPTER XXVI 


O F the thirty or forty men previously employed 
at the Bar Q, only two remained that winter— 
a Chinaman and Batt Leeson at the Bull Camp. 
The foothill ranch was completely deserted, and the 
Bull was left alone to look after his several thousand 
head of cattle. 

When the plague reached the country regions, there 

was a general exodus from the ranches, for tales were 

rife of stricken men corralled like cattle in bunkhouses 

and barns and left to shift for themselves. 

That winter the cattle in the foothills roamed the 

range like mavericks, rustling for their water and feed. 

But even then they were better off than the purebred 

stock at Barstairs, being hardy stuff bred to the range 

and the open fields, where they found ample feed. The 

pampered purebred cattle had always been used to 

care and nursing, having been practically raised by 

hand, and were accustomed to feed from troughs heaped 

up with food by the watchful attendants and hands. 

Now penned in narrow pastures and cattle sheds, where 
244 


CATTLE 


245 


the ground was bare as stone, they were irregularly 
left to the tender mercies of the half-dazed and always 
drunken Batt Leeson, and spasmodically fed and seldom 
watered. 

Chum Lee, paralyzed with fear of the “black plague,” 
which had cut down all of his “boys” at the Bull Camp, 
lived in terror that it would overtake him also. Chum 
Lee had no desire to die in the white man’s land; he 
wanted to repose in peace under the sacred soil of his 
ancestors. He would have run away from the camp, 
but the barren country, with its vast blanket of snow, 
gave no hope of any refuge, and he feared Bull Langdon 
as though he were an evil spirit. 

Back and forth between the two ranches the Bull’s 
great car tore like a Juggernaut of Fate. It did not 
in the least concern the cattleman that his men had 
died like flies, or that three-quarters of the country 
was down with the plague. What alarmed and incensed 
him was the fact that his cattle, the magnificent herd 
that he had built up from the three or four head rustled 
from the Indians, were roaming the range uncared-for 
and neglected. Many of them, drifting before a bitter 
blizzard, had perished in coulee and canyon, and worse 
still was the deterioration of the purebreds. The loss 


246 


CATTLE 


of a single head of this stock meant several thousand 
dollars. 

Nor was the Bull exclusively occupied with the loss 
of his cattle; he brooded unceasingly over Nettie Day, 
though the vision of her refused to leave his tortured 
mind and at the thought of the child she had borne 
he would rage up and down like a caged beast. The 
child had made her more than ever his, he gloated; yet 
how should he ever gain possession of her? He knew 
that the “Loring woman’s” words had not been idle, 
and in imagination he saw the black walls of the 
penitentiary looming in the future. Nevertheless, he 
intended to have her; though the whole world might 
stand against him, he would get her back. He would 

bide his time, and his day would come- The Loring 

woman would not always be on guard. His day would 
come. 

Nettie was nursing the stricken farmers; the pariah 
and despised of the foothills was going from ranch to 
ranch caring for those who had condemned her. She 
had sat up for many nights soothing and ministering 
to their suffering; she had closed the eyes of their best 
beloved, and her tears had dropped upon the faces of 
their dead. In their hours of deepest anguish and 



CATTLE 


247 


agony, they had clung to her cool, strong hands, as to 
an anchor. 

The country people had reversed their opinion and 
judgment of Nettie Day; her past was forgotten; she 
was their Nettie now. 

By the end of January the plague had reached its 
peak. Whole families had persisted and others were 
slowly creeping back to health and hope again. It 
would not be long. Dr. McDermott promised Nettie, 
before she would be free to return to her baby and her 
friend. 

She began to count the days, and to scan the skies 
for that shadowy arch across the heavens that in 
Alberta precedes a “Chinook” and is the forerunner 
of mild weather, for Dr. McDermott was expected to 
come for her with the first Chinook. Nettie thought 
with ceaseless yearning of her baby; away from him, 
he had taken visible shape in her mind, and, at last able 
to overlook the horror of his paternity, she loved him 
with all the passion of her young warm heart. When 
the Chinook at last broke up the fierce cold Dr. Mc¬ 
Dermott kept his word, and on the day he was to come 
for her, Nettie walked on air. She was going home— 
to her baby! 


248 


CATTLE 


When the doctor arrived, however, his face was 
grave, and his heart lay heavy within him. His labors 
were far from done. The Bow Claire Lumber Camp 
had succumbed to the plague, and nearly a hundred 
men were down. 

Calgary had promised help, but its former promises 
had not proved reliable, and in all that vast country 
few would be found willing to go deep into the heart 
of the timber lands to nurse the lumber-jacks. 

The doctor’s Ford chugged to the back door of the 
Munson farmhouse, where Nettie had been nursing the 
last of her patients. She was there to meet him, her 
old plaid cape about her and the woolen tam upon her 
head. Her face was aglow, and her eyes shone as 
bright as stars; he had telephoned her to expect him 
by noon, and had told her to be ready and not keep him 
waiting. 

Nettie had kissed the surviving three little Mun¬ 
sons and their mother, suddenly filled with passion¬ 
ate remorse for her past cruelty to the girl who had 
now saved their lives. She had shaken hands with 
the husky voiced father, who had simply and rever¬ 
ently begged God’s blessing for her, and to hide her 
own tears, she had run from them and shut the door 


CATTLE 


249 


between them. Now she was in the Ford, with the robes 
tucked comfortably about her; breathlessly she squeezed 
the arm of her old friend. 

“Oh, doc, just to think, I’m goin’ home now—home 
to Angel and my baby! Oh, it’s just heaven to be here 
beside you and on our way.” 

The “doc” had one of the new self-starters and 
there was no need of cranking this year. They buzzed 
down the road in the “tin Lizzie,” making a great 
racket and leaving in their wake a malodorous cloud 
of smoke. For some time they went along in silence, 
and gradually Nettie’s happy mood fell from her as 
she noted the gravity of the doctor’s face. She touched 
his arm timidly, though her heart began to misgive 
her. 

“Can you really spare me now, doc?” 

There was no answer from her old friend, and Net¬ 
tie pressed his arm, repeating her question. 

“Can you, doc?” And then, as still he did not an¬ 
swer: “Is any one else down now?” 

“Nettie.” Dr. McDermott had slowed up. He tried 
to hide the anxiety in his face, for he did not intend 
to ask any further sacrifice of the girl, but he wanted 


250 


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her to know the facts. “Nettie, the Bow Claire Lum¬ 
ber Camp is down.” 

“The Bow Claire!” 

The color receded from her face, her hand went to 
her heart as her thoughts flew instantly to Cyril. Slowly 
she realized the meaning of the doctor’s solemn words. 

“Nearly a hundred men, Nettie, and not a soul to 
care for them.” 

There was a long pause, while Dr. McDermott looked 
steadily ahead. The car was pounding and sending 
out jets of steam from its lately frozen radiator. 

“Doc,” cried the girl suddenly, “this ain’t the road 
to Bow Claire. Turn your car around!” 

“A promise is a promise,” said the doctor. “I prom¬ 
ised I’d bring you home to your child, lass, and I’ll 
keep my word if you say so.” 

“But I don’t say so. I don’t want to go home—yet. 

I shouldn’t be happy—even with my baby. My place 
is where I am needed most, and you should know 
where that is, doc.” 

“Dear lass,” said the doctor gently. “They’re need¬ 
ing you sore at Bow Claire.” 

“Then turn your car around, doc, and don’t you 
m-mind if I seem to be c-cryin’. It’s just because_ 


CATTLE 


251 


because I’m excited, and oh! I’m so g-glad of the 
chance—of the opportunity, doc, to go ’long with 
you to Bow Claire.” 

Dr. McDermott blinked through his misty glasses. 
He swung his wheel sharply around, backed along the 
slippery, thawing ground, and went over a culvert 
into a snow bank on the side of the road. 

There was a grinding cough of the engine, and it 
stopped dead. Again and again Dr. McDermott started 
the car, and back and forth it chugged in a vain effort 
to pull out of the slippery snow pit. From under a 
pile of produce and baggage, the doctor produced a 
snow shovel and began the process of “digging out,” 
making a road before and behind where the car might 
back and get a fair start onto the road again. As 
he shoveled the snow, digging under the car and all 
around it, they heard the honk of an approaching mo¬ 
torist and gradually Bull Langdon’s huge touring car 
swung into sight. At the sound of the automobile 
horn, Dr. McDermott had straightened up, intending 
to ask for aid, but when he saw who it was he doggedly 
resumed his digging alone. 

Bull Langdon took in the situation at a glance, and 
the sight of Nettie cooled the fever that had possessed 


252 


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him for days. She was visibly terrified at seeing him, 
and shrank back inside the Ford. The Bull observed her 
agitation with fierce delight and all the old feeling of 
domination over her came back to him. He got down 
from his car and examined the spot where the back 
Wheel seemed to have wedged itself in. 

“Stuck, are you?” he gloated. 

“We’ll be out in a minute.” 

“Not on your life you won’t. You’ll not pull out of 
that today.” 

“Very well, if that’s what you think, suppose you 
haul us out.” 

“Ain’t got a rope, and my engine won’t stand the 
gaff.” 

Dr. McDermott’s wrathful stare met the Bull’s in¬ 
solent smile. He turned his back upon him, and ap¬ 
plied himself with savage energy to his work. 

“Where you headed for?” 

“None of your damned business.” 

“It ain’t, heh ?” 

The Bull was now in high good humor. His hand 
rested upon the Ford, close to where Nettie was crouch¬ 
ing behind the curtain. His bold eyes held hers fas¬ 
cinated with terror. 


CATTLE 


253 


“Tell you what I’ll do,” he suggested after a mo¬ 
ment’s pause, “I’ll take you aboard my car and pack 
you wherever you’re goin\ You can ’phone the garage 
at Cochrane to send out and haul in your Lizzie.” 

Dr. McDermott could not see Nettie, but he could 
feel the silent, desperate appeal which her fear of the 
Bull prevented her crying aloud. 

“No,” he felt her imploring him. “Njo—never! I 
would rather stay here forever than go with him.” 

He looked the cattleman up and down with the same 
stare of cold contempt and reprobation as that which 
had caused Bull Langdon to quail before Angella 
Loring. 

“We’ll pull out without your help,” said Dr. McDer¬ 
mott curtly. “Don’t need you. Don’t want you.” 

“Hmph!” chuckled the Bull. He cut a chunk of 
chewing tobacco, and bit calmly into it. He spat, and 
blinked his eyes at Nettie, then buttoning up his big 
beaver fur coat, he moved towards his car. Climbing 
aboard, he grinned down at the girl as he pushed the 
self-starter with his foot. The engine instantly re¬ 
sponded with its soft purring and the great car glided 
along the road. A madness raged through the Bull 
as he drove; his pent-up passion of months was find- 


254 


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ing an outlet at last. The faster the car flew, the 
greater was his sense of relief and elation, as he told 
himself he would find the car still stalled in the same 
spot at nightfall when he returned for the girl. 

As soon as the Bull’s car had disappeared from 
sight Nettie was out of the Ford. 

“Oh, doc, he’ll be back. I know he will.” 

“Let him. Nothin’ to be afraid of. Feel in the 
pocket of the car—no, the other one. Give me that—” 

Nettie passed the revolver to him, and the doctor 
thrust it into his hip pocket. 

“Now, lass, can you give me a hand?” 

Together they pushed with might and main upon 
the car; it went up a few paces, and slid back into the 
snow. Again they pushed, and this time, at the doc¬ 
tor’s order, Nettie found and thrust under the wheel 
a stone that held it in place. The doctor then climbed 
aboard, and with Nettie pushing behind, the Ford 
snorted forward a few feet, slipped back, but jerked 
ahead again. There was a tremendous grinding noise, 
and the whirling wheel went over the side of the cul¬ 
vert ; the car jumped forward. With a whoop of tri¬ 
umph, Dr. McDermott made room for Nettie and they 
were off again. With loud clanking the flivver flew 


CATTLE 


255 


along those crazy roads, panted up incredibly steep 
and slippery grades, plunged into snow fields and on 
into the timber land, where only the narrow cattle 
trails made a path through the woods to the lumber 
camp. They “made the grade” in two and a half hours 
of hard riding, and pulled into the dead-still camp 
with a cheering honking of their horn. 


CHAPTER XXVII 


T HE meeting with Nettie on the road doubled the 
Bull’s determination to possess her again. The 
exhilaration of the chance encounter and the frustra¬ 
tion of his plans when, returning, he found the little 
oar gone, had roused his desire to a pitch of insan¬ 
ity. Everything else was forgotten; his cattle, his 
ranches, his great money losses, the impossibility of 
obtaining help, even the deterioration of his prized bulls 
at Barstairs—all these cares and anxieties ceased to 
exist in the overpowering passion that consumed him. 

Bull Langdon was incapable of love in its finer sense, 
but in his blind and brutal way, he was madly in love 
with Nettie Day. His passion for the girl was like a 
fire that burned and raged within him, seeking an out¬ 
let where there was none and for the time being the man 
was like a maniac. 

He thought of the girl ceaselessly, chortling with 

delight as he pictured her beauty, now sweeter than 

ever before in its young maturity. He had not noticed 
256 


CATTLE 


257 


a new quality of spirituality that suffering had added 
to her loveliness, a certain light that seemed to radiate 
from her; all he had seen was that the summer’s work 
in the fields had reddened her cheeks and brightened 
her eyes, and that her lips were like a scarlet flame. 

If he pictured Nettie as she had looked at him from 
her seat in the doctor’s Ford with her wide frightened 
eyes, his mind went back also to those other days, when 
he had held the girl in his arms. Many a night as he 
tramped the floor of the empty ranch house, his half- 
crazed mind lived over and over the joy of those days 
when he had held her in his power—“like purebred stuff 
in the Squeezegate.” She had been weak and docile 
then, a timid, terrified captive; but now there was a 
new expression in her face, a look that was like a 
shield—a warning guard that held him back and warned 
him that if trapped again she would struggle to the 
death. He told himself he had no desire to hurt her— 
he wanted only to have her back, where he believed 
she belonged by right; he would make her the second 
Mrs. Langdon. And at the thought of Nettie, at the 
Bar Q, reigning in the great ranch house, keeping the 
place clean and sweet as his first wife had done, the 
Bull threw out his arms and clinched them to him, 


258 


CATTLE 


as if in fact the struggling girl were actually in their 
grasp, and he crooned words of savage tenderness to 
his vision, only to moan and whimper the next moment 
as he came back to reality again. 

His desperation made him resourceful and cunning. 
He looked for Nettie Day at every farm and ranch in 
the foothills and in the adjoining prairie country. His 
car no longer tore along the roads from Bar Q to Bar- 
stairs, as he superintended the care of his demoralized 
herd. He had started now upon another hunt, and 
was running to earth a quarry whose price he set above 
all else. 

His spying at the Loring ranch had revealed the 
fact that Nettie was not there, but, laying in wait 
for the unfortunate Jake, his son of an earlier passion, 
in due time he captured and tortured the half-breed. 
He had picked him up on the trail, racing bare-back 
upon some errand into the hills, and his questions as 
to the whereabouts of Nettie, accompanied by prods 
and kicks, had brought the stuttered information that 
she was “far way off on the hills. She at lumber camp. 
Everybody gone die on Bow Claire.” 

That was enough for the Bull. He knew now where 
the girl was, but the knowledge, instead of satisfying 


CATTLE 


259 


and calming him, did the very reverse when he realized 
that Nettie and Cyril were once more together. That 
thought obsessed him, and filled his mind with murder¬ 
ous designs. 

In the midst of his fury he reminded himself of 
Nettie’s baby and a new idea, charged with possibil¬ 
ities, occurred to him. If he could not take the girl 
by force, there was one way by which she could be lured 
to Bar Q. He was amazed that he had not thought 
of it before. Human nature, he knew, was no differ¬ 
ent from cattle nature, where the young ones were 
concerned. The cattle mother would go, if necessary, 
through walls of fire and stone to reach her offspring, 
and what would keep Nettie Day from going to Bar Q, 
if she knew her baby was there? It was never necessary 
to throw the lariat upon the mother’s neck; the roping 
of her child was always enough. Bull Langdon swung 
his car around. 


CHAPTER XXVIII 


T WO “green” hands were now at Bar Q. They had 
been sent out by the Government Employment 
office, and for several days before his search for 
Nettie had begun Bull Langdon had been trying to 
break them into the cattle “game.” They were Eng¬ 
lish, guileless, clean-cut youngsters of good family, 
who looked upon the foully swearing cowman as a 
pathological subject that both interested and amazed 
them. 

Their knowledge of ranching or “rawnching,” as 
they called it, was of the vaguest, but they were good 
riders and the life appealed to them as sportsmen. 

One of the anomalies of the ranching population 
of Alberta is its tremendous variety of types. Here 
you will find a man who can neither read nor write, 
and his neighbor, often his chum, will be the son of 
an English lord, one of those odd derelicts that drift 
over from the Old Country and take so kindly to the 
ranch life that more often than not they return unwill¬ 
ingly to their homes. University men and agricultur- 
260 


CATTLE 


261 


ists experimenting with irrigation projects and inten¬ 
sive cultivation live side by side with business men 
and men from New York and other great cities in the 
States, who for diverse reasons have broken away from 
the cities, and gone in for farming on a big scale, 
raising the business of farming to the level of great 
enterprises rather than the slovenly and weary process 
it usually is. For the most part, however, the farming 
population of Alberta is made up of that solid, plod¬ 
ding type that have trekked out from eastern Canada 
or the midwestern states, tempted by the cheapness of 
the land and the richness of the soil. These are the 
backbone of the country and between these and the 
others are sandwiched colonies of peasants from Scan¬ 
dinavia and other parts of Europe. 

It is with the hired man as with the owner. He may 
be an illiterate clod of the old type, or a fresh-faced 
college-bred son of a man of wealth, even of title, or 
again some chance wanderer, gone “broke” in the 
colony, and using up the remittance from home on drink 
and cards. Besides these there is also the type of Eng¬ 
lish student and sportsman, who enjoys “roughing it” 
and hires out partly for experience and partly for a 
lark. 


262 


CATTLE 


To this latter type the men at Bar Q belonged. 
They had come up largely to escape a city of gloom 
and plague, and were extremely anxious to remain at 
the great ranch. The Bull, intent on getting away, 
endeavored in a few days to teach them what he called 
the “A B C” of ranching. They demonstrated their 
ability to remain in the saddle eight or ten hours at a 
stretch, and to ride over thirty or forty miles without 
undue fatigue. 

The Bull showed them “the ropes”; pointed out where 
certain cattle were to be gathered in; indicated the 
fields where they were to be driven, and promising to 
return “in a few days,” as he rode off and left the 
“tenderfeet” in charge of the great ranch. 

After his departure, the two young Englishmen rode 
over the place, marked the likely places for big game, 
took a “pot” or two at the yowling coyote on a hill; 
rode over the pleasant hills and pasture land, back to 
the comfortable bunkhouse, and decided that they 
had a “snap” and that “rawnching” was the life for 
them. It was a jolly sight better than hanging around 
a small city up to its neck in sickness. In the warm 
spell that followed soon after the departure of Bull 
Langdon, the Englishmen “rode the range” like hunt- 


CATTLE 


263 


ers, and their methods of rounding up cattle, though 
weird, were highly effective. They raced and chased 
the cattle, galloping along at top speed, thrilled by the 
spectacle of the fleeing herd which they persistently 
and doggedly tried to overtake. The experienced cow- 
puncher lopes along leisurely behind or alongside a 
bunch of cattle, taking care not to hurry them, for to 
run cattle is to “knock the beef” off them. That spring 
the lean cattle of the Bar Q amazed even the least 
sophisticated ranch folk, and it is certain that the 
guileless Englishmen never dreamed they were to blame 
for the animals* emaciated condition. 

When a cold spell followed the thaw, the Englishmen 
gaped at the thermometer, which was dropping rap¬ 
idly towards thirty below zero, and retreated hastily 
into the warm bunkhouse, firmly convinced that no 
creature living could survive such a temperature. The 
rapid change from cold to warm and back to cold again 
is a peculiarity of the Alberta climate, but the English¬ 
men had thought that the Chinook was the first warmth 
of an early spring. The unexpectedly bitter weather 
alarmed and appalled them; they spent the day 
shut up in the house, piling huge logs into the great 
square wood stove, that spluttered and sent off an enor- 


264 


CATTLE 


mous heat. They concocted toothsome dishes for their 
entertainment, for, like most Englishmen, they were 
expert hands at “batching” and camping, and knew 
how to cook. Their fare included such game as veni¬ 
son, moose, mountain goat and sheep, to say nothing of 
the small game, mallard duck, prairie chicken, par¬ 
tridge, grouse and quail which abounded in the wild 
woods of Bar Q, and the Englishmen had prudently 
“brought them down” while rounding up the cattle, not 
knowing that the shooting had contributed consider¬ 
ably to the flight of the terrified herd. 

This game, expertly drawn to the ranch by horse 
sleds, was piled up frozen in the immense storeroom 
adjoining the bunkhouse, where they also found an 
ample supply of stores. It was certain that no matter 
how long the siege of Arctic cold might last, the 
hands of the Bar Q would survive starvation. 

Shut in the bunkhouse, their days were by no means 
empty, for when not engaged in cooking or feeding 
the wood stove, they wrote articles on “ranching in the 
wild northwest,” or indited epistles home to thrilled 
relatives, who received from their letters a vague notion 
that their dear boys were sojourning in polar regions. 
Sometimes they would find in the letters from their 


CATTLE 


265 


English friends, whose knowledge of Canada was of 
the weirdest, warnings to be careful of the treacherous 
Esquimaux, and reminders to call, when they found 
time, upon some relative whose address was somewhere 
in their neighborhood, in Ontario or Nova Scotia. The 
ignorance abroad of the immense extent of the Cana¬ 
dian provinces was almost unbelievable. To all their 
folks at home the young Englishmen took delight in 
concocting thrilling romances in which they figured as 
big game hunters and fishermen, and through which 
they moved heroically, followed by bands of noble red 
men. 


CHAPTER XXIX 


W HILE Angella did her chores in the morning, 
Jake looked after Nettie’s laughing, fair¬ 
haired baby. The breed adored the child, and the 
hours he spent playing with him were the happiest 
of his life. Angella had built a small “yard” for the 
baby to play in safely while Jake, on his hands and 
knees, would play “cat and dog” outside the railings, 
to the baby’s unbounded delight. 

He had grown into a beautiful child, with his moth¬ 
er’s fair skin and blue eyes, and his blonde hair curled 
in tiny ringlets all over his small, round head. He was 
the soul of good humor, and though not robust, his 
health was rapidly improving. 

Life had assumed a new meaning for the woman 
recluse and the change was reflected in her expression. 
The defiant look was almost gone from the bright eyes, 
the lips were no longer bitterly compressed; with a 
faint color in her cheeks, and her soft gray hair curl¬ 
ing about her face, Angella Loring was almost beau- 
266 


CATTLE 


267 


tiful, as she held the baby close in her arms, and 
murmured foolish endearments over it. 

By the time she finished her milking and chores in 
the early morning, the baby would be awake, and as 
soon as she came into the house, he would set up a loud 
demand for bath and food. Before either Jake or 
Angella breakfasted, he must first be cared for. Satis¬ 
fied, rosy and clean, he would then be put in his “yard,” 
to tumble happily about among his favorite “toys,” 
the clothes pins and empty thread spools, which he 
rolled around the yard in high glee, or sucked and 
chewed upon with relish. 

One morning in March Angella’s chores took longer 
than usual. As hard as she pumped, the water froze 
before it could fall from the spout, and the barn was 
full of stock, which had come up from the frozen pas¬ 
tures to the shelter of the sheds. There were twenty 
or thirty head waiting hungrily for their share of the 
feed and water, which was generally reserved for the 
special milking stock and weak stuff interned in the 
barn. Angella worked hard and valiantly, driving back 
the greedy steers, and rescuing a half frozen calf, which 
barely escaped death under the scampering heels. 

Upon examining the little creature, she saw that if 


268 


CATTLE 


its life was to be saved she would have to take it to 
some warmer place than the barn. Throwing together 
a rough sled made out of a couple of boards, she 
managed to shove it underneath the motionless animal, 
and pull the litter with a lariat over the frozen 
ground to the house. 

Jake did not answer her calls to open the door and 
she had to push it open herself, letting in an icy gust 
of wind. She tugged and pulled at the sled till it 
slid into the kitchen, and at last deposited the calf 
in front of the roaring fire. Breathing heavily from 
the exertion and holding her sides, she leaned against 
the table, and suddenly caught sight of Jake lying face 
downward on the floor. Her first thought was that it 
was an attack of his periodical convulsions, but a mo¬ 
ment later she saw the empty “yard” as well. Her 
senses reeled; it seemed as though the whole room began 
to swim around her, as slowly her knees gave way, and 
for the first time in her life Angella Loring fainted. 
But it was only for a moment; she came back to con¬ 
sciousness almost at once and crawled on her knees 
to where Jake, now moaning and moving his head, still 
lay stretched upon the floor. His contorted face was 
horribly bruised and deathly pale, and when he opened 


CATTLE 


269 


his eyes the blood ran out of them. She saw then that 
Jake had been struck down and beaten. 

“Him! Him!” gibbered the breed. 

“Jake, what has happened? Where’s the baby? 
Oh-h!” 

“Bobby—all—a—gone. Him—the Bull take a baby! 
Him gone away.” 

Again the universe began to spin about her, but she 
refused to faint a second time. Feeling her way to the 
door, Angella Loring went out again into the bitter 
cold to the barn, where the mare with her new colt 
whinnied as she slipped the stock saddle across its back. 
She trapped the colt in an adjoining stall, and then 
as she got on the mare’s back, she whispered: 

“Go quickly, Daisy, or you’ll not get back to your 
baby soon.” 

There was a long snorting whinny from Daisy—a 
cry of protest at being taken from her colt—indig¬ 
nantly answered by the little one. 

The nearest telephone was five miles from Angella’s 
ranch, and when she rode into the farm yard, in spite 
of the intense cold, the mare was sweating from her 
wild race across the country. The astonished farmer 
who led Angella to the ’phone—it was the first time 


270 


CATTLE 


she had been known to step inside any of their houses— 
stayed by the door and listened with pricked-up ears 
as the excited woman called Dr. McDermott at Spring- 
bank. By a merciful chance he was there, and a few 
moments later the farmer was helping his strange vis¬ 
itor to a seat, and calling loudly to his wife for help. 
For again Angella Loring had fainted. Her first ques¬ 
tion when she opened her eyes and looked up at her 
neighbors’ faces was: 

“Has he come? Has Dr. McDermott come?” 

And when they replied that he had not, she wrung 
her hands and broke into weak tears. 


CHAPTER XXX 



HE unexpected return of the “Governor,” as 


JL the Englishmen had named Bull Langdon, was 
an exciting event in their hitherto pleasant lives. 
He arrived late on a March afternoon, the snort of his 
engine and the honk of his horn arousing the “hands” 
from a siesta, where, stretched before a raging wood 
fire, they drowsily smoked and read. 

They dressed leisurely in warm fur coats and over¬ 
shoes, before answering his impatient summons, and 
sauntering out in their own good time, smiled good- 
humoredly at the shouting cowman. 

“Here, you! Take this in. Ain’t no fire to the house. 
Want it thawed out.” 

The first of the Englishmen, whose long name need 
not appear here—“Bo” is what Bull Langdon called 
him—took the bundle in his hands and then almost 
dropped it, for something moved inside it, and a sound 
that was like a suffocated moan arose from its mysteri¬ 
ous depths. 

“My word! The thing’s alive, d’you know,” ex- 


271 


272 


CATTLE 


claimed the startled Englishman. “Hang it all, man, 
I believe it’s a baby.” 

“Take it to the bunkhouse,” roared the Bull, backing 
into the garage. “Thaw it out.” 

Gingerly carried into the bunkhouse by the amazed 
“Bo” and deposited upon the cot that he himself had 
but recently reposed upon, the baby continued its low, 
moaning cries. Both the little bare feet had kicked 
out from the sheepskin coat, and were frozen stiff. One 
minute fist stuck out of the coat, and there was a great 
swelling on the forehead, where he had fallen off the seat 
of the car to the floor. Its whole body, in fact, was 
bruised from the cruel bumping of that long mad ride 
from Yankee Valley, a distance of thirty-five miles. 

“Cutie,” the name sneeringly imposed upon the other 
Englishman by Bull Langdon, because of his natty 
dress and his monocle, now stuck that despised piece 
of glass in his right eye, and surveyed the child with 
amazement. Its cries were growing fainter, and a kind 
of frozen rigor was creeping over it. 

“Well, what’re you gapin’ at?” Bull Langdon was 
glowering in the doorway. 

“Where in the world did you pick the little beggar 
up?” inquired “Bo.” 


CATTLE 


273 


“It ain’t none o’ your business,” was the surly re¬ 
tort. “He’s here, and he’s here to stay. He’s mine, and 
he’s got my brand on him.” 

“You don’t mean to say that you brand babies in 
this country! Never heard of such a thing! It’s damned 
inhuman, I should say.” 

“Don’t matter what you say or think. I want that 
kid thawed out. Give ’im something to eat. He’s 
cold and hungry, but he’s healthy young stuff and ’ll 
pull through. Kids ain’t no different to cattle. Feed 
’em and keep ’em warm. That’s all they need. He’s 
bawlin’ now for feed. You got something handy?” 

“Nothing but a bite of cold venison. Hardly the 
stuff for a baby.” 

“He ain’t no baby. He’s a yearling. Here!” 

He had torn a strip of the venison from the piece, 
and had thrust it into the child’s hand. The tiny fin¬ 
gers closed feebly about the meat and then feebly un¬ 
closed. The bright eyes, so like his mother’s, opened 
in one wide, blind stare, then the white lids came down 
over them, closing the light out forever. 

“Gone to sleep,” grunted the cowman. “Keep the 
fire goin’. Thaw him out and feed him. That’s the 
stuff. He’ll come round. He’s good stuff. I’m off for 


274 


CATTLE 


the timber. Be back soon. You ain’t much good neither 
of you at tendin’ to cattle. So I’ll give you a nurse 
maid’s job. Let the cattle rustle for themselves. You 
concentrate on—”. He indicated with a jerk of his 
thumb Nettie’s child, now quite still where it lay. 

Alone, the two Englishmen continued to look at each 
other, astonished out of speech. 

“Well, I’m hanged,” said “Bo” at last, “absolutely 
hanged. What’s to do?” 

“Carn’t say any more than you can. Blessed if I 
know the first thing about a baby.” 

“Cutie” was looking down sentimentally now at the 
small blonde head. 

“It’s awfully quiet, isn’t it? Doesn’t seem—” He 
touched the tiny hand. It was cold as ice, and all 
of a sudden the two men looking down on that little 
.frozen thing realized the truth. 

“By Jove!” whispered the one. “The little beggar’s 
dead, d’you know.” 

Their eyes met apprehensively. 

“What’s to do?” 

“Gad, I wish I knew.” 

“It’s a dashed serious matter.” 

“Rather!” 


CATTLE 


275 


“I’ll plug over to the house and telephone. Where’d 
he say he was going?—er to timber something. I won¬ 
der what his telephone number might be.” 

“Try Information. She should know.” 

But Information knew of no timber number, but 
when the stuttering Englishman made clear to her 
that there was a dead baby at Bar Q, she connected 
him swiftly with the Provincial Police Station at Coch¬ 
rane, and a voice at that end promised after a series 
of impatient questions to “look into it,” and “Bo” 
hung up. 

The charm of “rawnching” was over for the Eng¬ 
lishmen. All the rest of that afternoon they sat in 
somber silence in the bunkhouse, carefully averting 
their eyes from the small covered head. They had 
no heart for their usual evening meal, but contented 
themselves with strong tea and smoking steadily upon 
their pipes. 

It was nearly dark when the sound of a motor along 
the road was heard, and then the labored panting of 
the engine as it made the steep grade to the ranch. The 
two young men hoped the police had come, not know¬ 
ing that the solitary mounty who had been despatched 
upon the case was coming by horse twenty-eight miles 


276 


CATTLE 


from the ranch, and could not arrive for several hours. 
When the Englishmen opened the door of the bunk- 
house, they were surprised to see a woman running 
swiftly ahead of the fur-coated doctor, whose acquaint¬ 
ance they had already made. 

Their first thought was that Angella was the mother, 
and indeed she might well have been as she threw her¬ 
self down beside Nettie’s baby, and burst into uncon¬ 
trolled, despairing sobs over the little dead body. 


CHAPTER XXXI 


C HUM LEE packed everything he possessed in 
the world in his capacious bamboo bag, slip¬ 
ping in between the articles of clothing bottles and 
pipes and boxes filled with redolent odors. He mut¬ 
tered and chattered frantically to himself as he 
packed, and his hands shook as if with ague. He tied 
and knotted a stout rope about the bag and, trembling 
and shivering, put on his old sheepskin coat, musk¬ 
rat cap and fur mittens. Hoisting the bag upon his 
back, Chum Lee hastened on panic-winged feet away 
from the camp at Barstairs. 

He had awakened from a long doze, in which he 
dreamed of summer seas, green as jade, of colorful 
sampans, alive with moving, friendly faces; of a girl’s 
face, oval and soft, with gentle almond eyes, and a 
smile like a caress, whose hair was black and smooth 
as the wing of a teal, and decked with bridal flowers. 
That fair vision of his home and the young wife he 
had left in China vanished into the cruel mists of mem¬ 
ory. He awoke to intense cold, the bleakness of death 
277 


278 


CATTLE 


itself in the one-room bunkhouse. With a sob, the 
Chinaman crept out of bed, scurried across the room, 
only to find the fire was out, then staggered to the 
woodbox. On his way back to the stove, his arms 
loaded, he stumbled across something that lay upon 
the floor in his path. A loud cry escaped the China¬ 
man. The wood dropped from his shivering arms 
and clattered down upon the Bar Q “hand.” Batt 
Leeson lay upon his back, where he had rolled out 
of his bunk overnight. His mouth and eyes were 
wide open, but did not move or flicker, for Batt was 
in his last long sleep. 

The sight of the dead man, the last of the “boys” 
to succumb to the “black plague,” was too much for 
the overwrought and drug-weakened Chinaman. Even 
the terrors of the zero weather were less appalling to 
face than what was inside that shack. Between his 
chattering teeth, Chum Lee sent up frantic appeals 
to the gods of his ancestors to lift the dreaded curse 
which had befallen the land in which he had sojourned 
too long. 

As he went out of the gate, the long-drawn savage 
roar of hungry bulls followed him and, turning back 
upon a sudden resolution, Chum Lee shoved the bars 


CATTLE 


279 


along the sliding doors. He would perform a last 
act of charity and win the favor of the gods. The 
famished brutes within would come up presently against 
the loosened door, and find themselves free from the 
prison where they had been confined for days. 

That day, bellowing and moaning their unceasing de¬ 
mands for feed and water, the bulls crashed against 
the doors, as the Chinaman had foreseen, and they 
gave. The animals crossed a barrier of logs, and with 
heads lifted, they sniffed along the corrals and found 
the bars which the Chinaman had left down, and strayed 
out into the lower pasture. The gate stood wide open 
to the highway, and the vast country stretched beyond, 
unspeakably desolate under its mantle of deep snow. 
Out into the world, in search of that which had been 
denied them in their luxurious and costly sheds, went 
the famous Hereford bulls. 

Pampered and petted, used to being fed almost by 
hand, and knowing no range save the sweet home pas¬ 
tures, how were they likely to fare in the wilderness? 
Now the merciless cold of the implacable winter smote 
them to the bone, and the unbroken expanse of frozen 
snow rose four feet deep in mounds and hillocks on 
all sides of them. 


280 


CATTLE 


There were no nibblings. Streams and rivers were 
frozen hard. The wretched cattle swept along the 
road huddled together before a blinding wind out of 
the hill country, forerunner of a coming Chinook, but 
with its first blast intensifying the cold and lashing 
the last ounce of strength out of the lost and famished 
cattle. 

They drifted blindly before the wind, driven against 
fence lines and trapped in coulee and gulch. Great 
white flakes began to fall like fairy birds drifting in 
the dazzling sunlight; like millions of feathers they 
fell upon the huddled herd, burying them under a 
mighty mound. 

The only survivor of all that noble herd was the 
bull once known as “Prince Perfection Bar Q the IV,” 
of whom the great specialist had predicted that he would 
startle the purebred world. Facing the west wind like 
a gladiator, the Prince turned from his fellows, and de¬ 
fiantly trod his way through the storm to where the 
outline of the hill country loomed up with its promise 
of shelter and food. Sniffing along the road allow¬ 
ances, pausing only to bellow his immense complaint, 
the massive brute pressed on his way. 


CHAPTER XXXII 


T HERE was a celebration at Bow Claire. Lan¬ 
terns hung from rafters and eaves to give the 
place an air of festivity. Across the back of the big 
lumber camp, where the fifty-five men who had pulled 
through were now convalescent, bunting and bright 
Indian blankets were hung. 

Now that the last of the men had been pronounced 
out of danger, the lumber-jacks, with the connivance 
of the doctor and an Indian, had smuggled into the 
camp the provisions for the intended festival. 

When Nettie came from the foreman’s house that 
evening, to make her nightly rounds of her emergency 
camp hospital, the surprise party awaiting her almost 
frightened her. A dozen accordions all struck up at 
the same moment; mouth organs joined in; Jim Crow, 
the only darky in the camp, grinning from ear to 
ear, was twanging a real b.anjo, and Mutt, a giant 
Russian, with a voice like a great bell, led all hands 

in a deafening cheer for Nettie, a cheer that, in spite 
281 


282 


CATTLE 


of their weakness, the men kept up for a long time. 

Astonished and moved beyond speech, Nettie looked 
at her “boys,” and smiled her thanks, though the tears 
ran down her cheeks. But the ceremonies were by no 
means over with the cheering and singing. Thin and 
pale, his eyes dark with a look of tragedy that wrung 
the girl’s heart, Cyril Stanley stepped forward, a bou¬ 
quet of flowers in his hands. 

He alone in all the camp had been unable to find 
the courage to speak to Nettie. Those flowers, ragged 
from their journey on horseback, had cost the Bow 
Claire Camp more than the bouquet of a prima donna, 
and were intended to speak a message to the girl that 
the men lacked eloquence to say. Cyril had begged for 
the privilege of being the one to present the flowers. 
He came slowly forward, daring to look Nettie steadily 
in the face for the first time, and put out the hand 
that held the flowers; but the words he had planned 
to speak died on his lips. He could not even whisper 
her name. 

She took the flowers from him and looked deep into 
his eyes. While the camp looked on in bewildered silence, 
the two estranged lovers gazed at one another for a long 
moment and when it had passed it had taken with it 


CATTLE 


283 


all the doubt and misunderstanding that had clouded 
Cyril Stanley’s mind. Something within him seemed 
to burst, breaking down all the dikes of hatred he had 
built up in bitterness against her. He knew, as he looked 
into Nettie Day’s clear eyes, that he loved her still 
beyond anything else on earth, and that he could have 
sworn by the living God above them that she could 
do, and had done, no wrong; that her heart was clean 
and pure and unstained. 

Suddenly a sharp sound broke upon the hush that 
had fallen so strangely in the camp. The crisp metallic 
ring of a horse’s hoofs sounded outside, and slowly the 
girl, her flowers still in her arms, turned as pale as 
death. 

His chin thrust out, his big knotted hands swinging 
like a prize fighter’s, half drunk with alcohol and mad 
desire, Bull Langdon burst into the camp. His glance 
swept that circle of feeble, motionless men, then turned 
to transfix the unhappy girl, whose flowers now lay 
where they had fallen to the floor. Before a word was 
said the truth flashed like a miracle over Cyril Stan¬ 
ley’s mind. Now Nettie Day would never need to say 
one word in explanation to her lover. A flood of mem¬ 
ories rushed over the boy, shaking him to his depths 


284 


CATTLE 


as he realized the damnable crime that had been wrought 
against the girl he loved, and which death alone could 
now wipe out. 

“So here y’are,” cried the cattleman, towering above 
the cowering Nettie. “You come along home with 
me, gell. Your baby—and mine, gell, is at Bar Q. He’s 
needin’ you more’n this bunch of bos.” 

An inarticulate cry broke from Cyril’s throat as he 
leaped fairly into the face of Bull Langdon. Staggered 
by the unexpected onslaught, and then seeing who it 
was that had attacked him, his lips drawn back like 
a gorilla’s, Bull Langdon, with a sweep of his arm, 
felled the boy to the ground. He tried vainly to rise, 
but, weakened by his recent long illness, he had hardly 
struggled to his knees before the cattleman sent him 
spinning to the floor again. 

A low murmuring passed over the crowd of lumber¬ 
men, a hoarse cursing protest, that grew in volume 
and fury as the Bull laid his hand on Nettie Hay. It 
burst like a tidal wave when the frenzied girl broke 
from his grasp and fled through the open door. 

The Bull found himself surrounded by a mob of mad 
men, cursing and weeping because of their weakness 
and inability to pull down the man they longed to 


CATTLE 


285 


kill, they leaped and struck at him. With his back 
to the wall he struck out right and left with his mighty 
fists, sending one man after another staggering to 
the floor, meanwhile edging craftily nearer and nearer 
to the door through which Nettie Day had fled. 


CHAPTER XXXIII 


I T was a still, cold night. Nettie Day rushed blindly 
on horseback through the pathless dead timber 
lands. With amazing presence of mind she had 
mounted the Bull’s own mare, which he had left stand¬ 
ing outside the camp. On and on she urged the great 
animal, heedless of snow-laden brush and boughs that 
snapped back and lashed her as she rode. 

The dense woods lay wrapped in a vast silence. Not 
a twig stirred on the frost-bowed trees. No living 
foot seemed to move within the depths of the for¬ 
est. All that she heard, if indeed she heard anything, 
as she fled like the wind through the timber land, 
was the crunch of her horse’s hoofs on the frozen 
snow. On and on, indifferent to the piercing cold; 
intent on one purpose only, to reach Bar Q and get 
her baby before the Bull could overtake her. 

The mare was built on big, slim lines. Of thorough¬ 
bred racing stock by her sire, she was the foal of a 
Percheron mare, and therefore swift as well as strong. 
She carried the girl throughout that night without 


CATTLE 


287 


once stopping, all of the twenty miles to the Bar Q. 

Dawn was breaking over the still sleeping land, 
and a great shadowy arch spread like a rainbow across 
the sky, the long-prayed-for symbol of Chinook weather. 
Before the day was half gone a wind would blow like 
a bugle call from the mountains, and, racing with the 
sun, would send its warm breath over the land. But 
Nettie Day was blind to the omen of spring. Cramped 
and cold from her long ride, with a speechless terror 
tearing at her heartstrings, she fell rather than dis¬ 
mounted from her horse, and staggered toward the 
house, at the door of which Angella Loring stood, with 
empty arms. 

Meanwhile another kind of drama had taken place 
in the timber land. Bloody and battered from his 
fight with the lumber-jacks and loggers, Bull Langdon 
sought the trail. In those deep woods, so still and 
silent, with the spell of the night upon them, in spite 
of the deep silence, there was a feeling of live, wild 
things hidden in bush and coolie, crouching and peer¬ 
ing through the snow-laden brush. 

He knew the country well, and had almost as keen 
a sense of smell as the cattle themselves. He had 
boasted that he could “sniff his way” anywhere through 


288 


CATTLE 


the foothill country, and that his long years of night 
riding had given him a cat’s eyes. Where the dense 
forests broke here and there, the clearings were as 
bright as day in the moonlight. 

It was twelve miles to Morley, an Indian trading 
post on the edge of the Stony Indian Reserve, and 
the Bull calculated that by turning off the main trail 
and following an old cattle path, he could cut the 
distance down a third. 

The white moon behind moving clouds lighted his 
way one moment and plunged him in darkness the 
next. The cattle trail went in a wavering line toward 
a valley that ran along the Ghost River, where lay 
the summer range of the foothill cattle. 

If the woods were still and dark, the valley, flooded 
with moonlight, looked like a great pool on whose 
farther bank dark forms were vaguely moving. These 
were the stray cattle that had escaped the fall round¬ 
up, and found shelter from the inclement weather in 
the seclusion of this deep valley, protected by the hills 
on one side, and the rapidly flowing Ghost on the 
other. 

The first impulse of a cattleman upon spotting 
stray cattle on the range is to ride close enough to 


CATTLE 


289 


them to read the brand upon their ribs; no easy 
matter at night, but the Bull was used to this. He 
was halfway across the valley when a certain restless 
stirring made him aware that he had been seen. Range 
cattle will move blindly before a man on a horse, but 
it is a reckless man who will risk himself near range 
cattle afoot. The roar of one of the leaders sent the 
cowman cautiously back into the shelter of the brush. 
He was unprepared to meet a stampede, but he marked 
the place to which the cattle had strayed, and made 
a mental note to round them up in a few days. 

He was now but four miles from Morley, still travel¬ 
ing along the edges of the woods, when suddenly a low 
moaning call, growing ever in volume and power, until 
it swelled into a mighty roar that shook the bristling 
branches of the trees, smote the still night, and reverber¬ 
ated in the surrounding hills. 

The cattleman stood stock-still, his head lifted and 
his face strained upward, his ears alert to catch the 
sound again. For he well knew that great far-reaching 
bellow which had once swelled his breast with pride; 
it was the furious challenge of the champion bull. Some¬ 
where, close at hand, but hidden in those dense woods. 
Prince Perfection Bar Q the IV was at large. 


290 


CATTLE 


The sound was not repeated and Bull Langdon came 
at last out of the sheltering woods. A wide field that 
flanked on one side the Banff Highway lay before him, 
on the other side of which were the fenced lands of the 
Indian Reserve. 

As he moved through the thick woods, pausing every 
now and then to listen for treading hoofs behind him 
or for a breath of that low, menacing murmur that 
preceded the terrible roar, the cattleman’s over¬ 
wrought fancy had pictured the bull upon his trail, nor 
was it premonition that held him, but the fearful cer¬ 
tainty that the savage animal was following close upon 
his tracks. 

Bull Langdon considered the open space of the field 
and reckoned up his chances of making a swift dash 
across to the road, and across the road to the line of 
Indian fencing. A certain safety from his pursuer. 
For an instant he hesitated, then with lowered head, 
like one of his own blindly driven cattle, the cowman 
sped across the field. Not, however, swiftly enough 
for the Hereford bull that had trailed him. 

On the edge of the timber land, Prince Perfection 
Bar Q the IV stood in a proud and questioning atti¬ 
tude with his stern eyes fixed upon the moving speck 


CATTLE 


291 


before him. Slowly he marked his prey, then his head 
dropped, and with a lumbering gait, yet incredibly 
swift, he made straight for his quarry. The cowman, 
his back to the oncoming bull, intent only on reaching 
the shelter of the barbed wire fences on the south side 
of the Banff Highway before it was too late, did not 
dare look round, as like a missile released from a 
colossal catapult the great bull shot across the field. 
Sideways and still on the run, with his lowered head 
swinging from side to side, he drove his horns clear 
through the cowman’s ribs. There was a horrible rend¬ 
ing sound, and suddenly Bull Langdon was tossed into 
the air to fall to earth like a stone. Again and again 
the savage bull gored and tossed him until he was rent 
into pieces. 

A master vengeance was in that act of justice, though 
no torture of Bull Langdon’s body could atone for the 
torture he had inflicted upon Nettie Day’s soul. 


CHAPTER XXXIV. 


H EAR me, lass,” said Dr. McDermott, his hands 
resting upon the bent shoulders of Angella 
Loring. “In the old land, I was a stable lad and 
you the grand young lady of the manor house; my 
father was your father’s groom, and all the McDer¬ 
motts before me served the Lorings; but here in Al¬ 
berta we’re naught but mon and woman, and as mon to 
woman, lass, I’m asking you to be my wife.” 

She answered without words, laying her hands in 
his, but as he looked into her eyes, the doctor saw 
all the shadows of the sad years fade away like ghosts 
before the dawn, and love like the sunlight of the land 
of their adoption had taken their place. 

“It’s a puir rough sort of man you’re getting,” 
said the doctor huskily, but she laid her hands upon 
his lips and answered: 


292 


CATTLE 


293 


“Dr. McDermott, I’ll be getting the salt of the 
earth!” 

Hat twisting in his hands, outside the barn Cyril 
waited for Nettie. As she came out, a pail of milk in 
either hand, he gently took them from her and set them 
upon the ground. He had learned that speech by heart 
—the speech he was going to say to Nettie, but now as 
they looked into one another’s eyes, no words were 
needed. As instinctively as life itself, they moved to 
each other. Nothing on earth now mattered save that 
they were in each other’s arms. 

In the house, hand in hand, they faced their friends, 
and immersed in their own joy noted not that the doc¬ 
tor’s arm was about Angela’s shoulders. 

“Nettie and I are going to get married in the sum¬ 
mer,” said Cyril simply. 

“Why wait for the summer?” rumbled their doctor 
friend. “Angel and I are going to Calgary tonight. 
Come with us.” 

“ ’Twill take a month or two to rebuild the home 
again,” said Cyril wistfully. 

“Why build again,” said Angella, softly. “There’s 
this house for you, Cyril. It’s our wedding gift to you 


294 


CATTLE 


and Nettie. I’ll be going—” She smiled and blushed 
like a girl, but finished the words bravely—“to my hus¬ 
band’s house,” she said. 

THE END 















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